Puerto Montt, Chile Feb. 26th, 2009

Are we in Austria, is this Japan, is this Mt. Fuji?? No, No and No. We are still in southern Chile!! The Andes Mountains really do go on forever (not really). Who knew that we would find a mountain that would look almost exactly like Mt. Fuji?? When we do get to Japan, I hope the day is as clear as this day was so you can see the similarity. This snow-capped mountain is Osorno Volcano. An earthquake rocked this area in 1960 and took away most of the historic architecture. However, the majestic mountain is still there! We had a day of adventure planned up on this mountain. A 16 station zip-line dangling over a 1,000 foot ravine! A washed out road at the top of the mountain prevented us from trying to kill ourselves and probably one of the most exciting experiences of the trip! Excitement turned into disappointment for sure. The kids more so than Charles and me! A long bus ride to the dead end was not good! We turned around and made our way back to the lake district and got off the bus with our buddies Sondra and Hank. Had a wonderful lunch, although Nicky did not want to try all the local dishes!! The lady that owned the restaurant came over and explained it all to us and we had a feast!! We did some shopping and hired taxis to take us back to Puerto Montt. A great day, although not what we set out to do!!

Cruising the Chilean Fjords and Darwin Channel Feb. 24-25, 2009

You can look at a map and try to comprehend this part of the world but until you spend a couple of weeks "cruising" it, you can't really grasp the remoteness, the beauty, the quiet, the wet, the cold, the dry and the hot. If you lifted the entire country off the map and brought it up to the west coast of the USA, then pasted the northern tip of Chile to the southern tip of the Baja of California and then flipped it over, you would almost have the identical climate! The northern part of Chile is DRY and HOT and near the Andes Mountains of course as Chile's widest part is about 150 miles wide and it's most narrow part (excluding the thousands of islands) is about 50 miles wide, so the Andes are never far away! Much like the southern part of the US west coast and Baja and the Rockies are not far away! The southern part of Chile is wet and cold, much like Seattle! Hence, flipping it gives you a climate like our west coast! The entire country is 2,730 miles long. They call it the "Shoestring" country as it is so narrow. There are 12 regions in Chile and I think we will see most all of them. Cruising these fjords has been a navigators dream/nightmare. Some of the islands we went through on this ship, I would be afraid to navigate our pontoon boat through! We had to pick up two "pilots" that stayed on our ship from Cape Horn to Valparaiso. They helped our captain with their "local knowledge" of the islands and fjords. The areas we maneuvered through at times were so narrow you could skip a rock across it (almost). The water was calm enough as well. It was more like cruising a lake than a sea for sure. If someone blindfolded you and dropped you here, not many would guess Chile. Imagine lots of evergreen trees, clear smooth water and glaciers. Maybe Norway? Yes, that would be a good guess. It seems that Chile, Norway and the state of Alaska are the only places on this globe where you can find this scenery. The area where the Northern Ice Field can be found is called San Rafael Lagoon National Park. This ice field feeds 19 glaciers. It is 4 miles across and 47 miles long. It is known for it's beauty and calving (this is when a piece of the glacier breaks off). When a calving occurs, the ice splinters off and crashes into the sea. What a sight and a sound. It sounds like jet engines! A good science lesson was watching the ice calving off and not hearing it until a few seconds after it hit the water. It took that long for the sound to travel to us. We took a catamaran from our ship for an up close look at this ice fiels and got to within about 100 yards of it. Although it is beautiful to see the ice splinter off, you can imagine what that that might mean. Is it normal climate change or has global warming found Chile? The local government has marked the stone mountains that surround the ice fields with dates. Why dates? They have marked the mountains with dates of where the ice field "used" to be! The 1962 date stood out in my mind as that was the year before I was born. The amount of area of ice field that has been "lost" is about 500 yards from the spot it was marked back to the ice face of the ice field! That is a TON of ice! It is hard to explain really, as the area across the front of the ice field is probably about 250 yards maybe more. There is another ice field in Chile called the Southern Ice Field! We did not see that one. I guess we will have to come back.

Sweet Home Alabama 2-24-09

We had a very exclusive lunch one day on the ship. You could only sit at our table if you were from Alabama! Thanks to our friends Leon and Anne from Montgomery, we had a great time. A wonderfully talented musician named Stephen Kane was on the ship as an entertainer. When he was on the stage he asked if anyone was from Alabama, to his surprise he heard some cheers, of course! He said in all his years of asking, he never ran across anyone that really WAS from Alabama when he asked, so we included him in our luncheon as he is from Ft. Payne! Small world for sure!! He was very interesting to talk to and has had quite the career. He comes back to Alabama a couple of times a year but stays on the road and on the high seas performing. He plays the piano the way everyone would aspire. He has energy that comes out as he plays, personality, and talent that should not all be in one person! We enjoyed meeting him and watching his shows. We are certainly proud he is from Alabama!

Watching The Academy Awards Sun. Feb.22

What is better than watching The Academy Awards on a cruise ship? Of course it is GOING to the Academy Awards, right??!! What is next best, you might ask? Watching The Academy Awards with an Academy Award winner!! Mr. Richard Sherman is on this ship performing. He has won two Academy Awards!! He wrote all the music for Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Whinnie the Pooh....it goes on and on! He is so talented and so interesting. He had a Q and A one day and he had all the time in the world for anyone that had questions. He is a lovely man and is his wife. Kathleen hung on his every word. Such a priveledge to meet him.

Punta Arenas, Chile 2-22-09

Punta Arenas is the last city on the South American Continent proper. The other cities we have been to further south, were on islands. The name Punta Arenas, comes from the Spanish term Punta Arenosa, which literal translation is, Sandy Point. It has been called the city of red roofs because at one time all the roofs here were red. Now there are a few other colors.
The statue in the middle of the square is one most people frequent when they come here. Why? Beacause they say if you rub the toes on the feet of the statue you will return here. Everyone that I spoke with that has done it has made a trip back here. Did we rub the toes? Did we buy 10 Alpaca scarves? Did we step over dogs on every corner? The answers to these questions might be found in the photos.
We did visit a village where they have preserved the way of life from many years ago. The Model-T's were a real surprise. The movie theatre was too. The "yard" was full of old tractors, and the like. The statue of the sheep, the farmer and the dog, is the one they are most proud. The farmer is fighting the wind as he moves his sheep further south in Patagonia. Sheep are all the rage here. The trees. Those trees are all cyprus. Just beautiful. They shape them and they look like pieces of art. The really tall ones shaped like bells were in the cemetary. Those trees line all the "streets" within the cemetary and make the cemetary more like an art museum. The weather was cool and it started to rain later in the day but we had already gotten all of our treasures and headed back to the ship by then. A fun place for lunch was La Luna. We tried some of all they had. Chilean Sea Bass was no where to be found. Don't know why we have so much of that on menus in Alabama! The hat. We have seen leather hats from Fortaleza, Brazil all the way around the continent. If there was an outbreak of lice, Kathleen would have a bad case by now! Luckily, no lice and she finally found "the" hat. She looks like a local! This country has beautiful, friendly, talented people. We have less than a week before we leave South America and we will miss it.