Grey, foggy, raining, windy - an apt description for our deeper ingress into the Chilean Fjords. We snaked our convoluted way through Canal Messier and Canal Sarmiento, the inside route, and nosed into the screw (icy bits) strewn bay at the base of Amalia Glacier, one of the many glaciers descending from the Campos de Hielos (Ice Fields) which extend from Puerto Montt to the Torres Del Paine National Park, a distance of severeal hundred kilometers. This province of Chile is called Ultima Esperanca (Last Hope) for good reason.
Large shoals reach far into the bay, and our ship hovered a little distance off the face of the massive glacier to allow us to admiret - and of course photograph - our first real tidal glacier we encounter on this journey.
Despite pummelling winds and relentless rain, I spent most of the day out on deck. There was a small fishing boat, dwarfed by vertical cliffs, an old rusted wreck which must have taken the wrong turn around an island or became disabled and carried onto treacherous rocks by strong currents. But, no human habitation anywhere...the ancient Alakaluff nomads are long extinct.
The Veendam, another Holland America ship, crossed our way, looking rather ugly after her recently completed 'enhancement renovation'. Her rear decks have been extended and built up almost vertical at her stern. This morphed her pleasingly designed aft end from pleasant open air platforms to a solid wall of stacked staterooms. The remodelling turned her into one more box like floating shopping mall look-alike. Her bow still retains the old Holland America elegance - but the rest - a crying shame! But, she now is able to carry an additional 100 paying guests, in somewhat lessened old world elegance and intimacy. The old aft swimming pool is gone, which was a pleasant oasis protected from the winds. Instead there is a lounge chair packed platform on the new top deck level, with a free form wading pool (which swaps over the edges when the ship tosses around).
However, the Amsterdam has so far been spared that fate, and one can still 'get lost' in secret nooks somewhere on the ship, and watch the sea scape float by.
I did that, and more. Birds and animals abound, and I watched plenty of them frolicking around.
Cold feet, cold hands and cold everything finally convinced me to leave off gazing at the stark, almost lunar surroundings, and slip back inside the warm and rather quiet interior of the ship.
