Puerto Natales In Pictures (aka I'm Feeling Too Lazy To Blog)

After waking up to yesterday's sudden snowfall, which lasted through the day, we peeped through our curtains the day after to find glorious blue sunny skies!

We threw ourselves out of the house for a pre-breakfast stroll along the waterfront.

All dolled up and waiting to go out to sea

Slightly older boats waiting for a facelift

Eaten away by the sea

The pier here is in pretty bad shape too

A battered old dame who lead a colourful life in her younger days at sea

The early bird gets the worm. The early humans get the nice photos.

Along the waterfront on the other end of town: only the cormorants have use for these wooden stumps

For a small fishing and port town, Puerto Natales has a surprising number of small, stylish, boutique hotels. This one is designed to look like shipping containers, stacked up and awaiting their ocean voyage

Over the next 2 days, we were victims of Puerto Natales' finicky weather. The husband peered through the bathroom window while on a toilet visit and saw nice clear skies. He made me shut down my computer "NOW NOW NOW!" and chased me out for an afternoon walk.

To be safe, I grabbed my hat, buff and gloves. I ended up donning everything just 30 seconds after we stepped out of the house.

Who told me that it was nice weather for walk, hmmm?

One of the cuter things we saw on our daily walks in town, just outside the used book store

Nice dustbin

Chasing sunshine and dodging snowfall can sure work up a good appetite. But the thought of eating yet another hot dog, chicken and chips plate, pizza or pasta - all part of Chile's awful standard fare - can silence that growling tummy. Thank goodness there's lots of fresh catch available in Puerto Natales to replace all that junk food on the menu!

Seafood soup (which I suspect gave me a bad tummy afterwards cos I don't usually eat shellfish. Poh chai pills to the rescue!)

The safer but very good option - crispy golden brown fish fillets!

Have Kids, (Still) Will Travel

Retirement is a phase in life that everyone talks about and looks forward to attaining. That's supposedly when you finally have all the time at your fingertips to do whatever you want, whenever you want, wherever you want. Like travel the world.

However, one of the key reasons why we decided to do this long trip sooner in life rather than later was that we are now in the pink of health, making it easier for us to handle the physical assertions of a long backpacking trip. Okay, so maybe we're not as pink as when I was clearing hurdles on the track at 17 or when Dan was jumping out of planes in the army, but it's relatively easier on our increasingly-creaky knee caps and near-wobbly ankles now, as compared to when we're officially in the senior citizens age category. Watching some older travelers clutch at their chests while they struggled with the endless flights of uneven stone steps amongst Peruvian ruins a few months ago, I felt really glad to be touring South America now, and not 40 years later.

(That said, there are exceptions to the Young Is Better Than Old rule. We just met a Japanese man in Ushuaia who was waiting to board a ship to Antarctica. He insisted on showing me a neverending slide show of ALL the photos on his laptop. He also had the funkiest-smelling feet EVER. But he rocks - cos he just scaled the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro earlier this year. He is 75 years old.)

The other reason for wanting to travel NOW NOW NOW: kids. Or rather, the lack of them. When we were planning for this trip 2 years ago, the idea of traveling with children seemed impossible. IMPOSSIBLE. In fact, people our age with kids were confirming this perception and encouraged us to travel all we could before starting a family.

Along the way, we have met a few young couples who, like us, took a year off work to travel South America and the world. The main difference is - they are doing it with at least 2 young kids in tow. And as I watch them from the sidelines, instead of gloating "thank god we're not traveling with kids", I find myself thinking "hey, it's actually doable... gosh." And I respect them for their commitment to their dream and having the courage to take on the challenge of traveling as a family.

We spent a day exploring the Torres del Paine national park with a French-German couple and their 2 children - 10 year-old Lea and 5 year-old Cedric. We had all disembarked from the Navimag ship and were staying at Hostel Paulette in Puerto Natales.

Cedric, a raging ball of energy, tearing through the Miladon Cave en route to Torres del Paine

Lea dashing back down the bridge we had just crossed, so as to repeat her sprint across the river for papa's camera

The Valois are on a year-long round-the-world trip which started in June this year. Jim (the father) explained that they had spent a year and a half planning and preparing for this big trip. Together with his wife Gaby, they took the kids out of school and spend a good part of each day rigorously taking each child through the school syllabus - all 10 kilograms worth of it. They teach the children French, English and Mathematics. Through tours and excursions, they learn Science, History and Geography.

Lea & Jim walking hand in hand through the forest at Torres del Paine

While Cedric tore through the forests and beaches ahead of everyone else, Lea preferred to hang back and walk alongside Dan and me. I initially wondered what I should talk about to a 1o year-old, but Lea was incredibly accustomed to conversing with adults and chatted easily about school, countries the family had visited, their home in France, etc. She casually asked about our travel itinerary, our favourite colours and what sports we do, occasionally running ahead to ask her father to translate words from French to English when she got stumped (which was not often at all.)

As we walked along the trail, she stopped to pick some bright green lichen off the tree trunks and proceeded to enlighten us on the relationship between the colour of the lichen and the level of pollutants in the air! I was partly amazed at how comfortable she was with us, and partly touched that she chose to be in our company instead of clinging to her parents (which I did alot when I was 10!)

Me with the clever little elf, Lea, whose favourite colour is green

The best thing about exploring the park with kids, was learning to explore a place like a kid again. We perused the beach for the prettiest souvenir pebbles with them. We hopped and skipped along trails. We balanced on slippery ice blocks with our arms outstretched. We spotted icebergs floating in the bay and started racing one another towards them.

Cedi FINALLY taking a break from sprinting, and throwing himself at Dan's thighs

Lea walking along a balancing beam of ice

Dannie brought a giant ice sculpture to class for Show & Tell today

When we reached a long pebble beach that offered a faraway view of the Grey Glacier and a sea filled with large icebergs, Dan and I automatically whipped out our cameras and started snapping the scene from all angles, as we followed the coastline mechanically, just plodding along, 1 foot after another.

Icebergs with Glacier Grey in the background

Halfway across the bay, we realised that Lea was no longer walking with us. We looked up to see her sitting on a pile of pebbles in our wake. She beckoned to us to go over. I groaned inwardly, thinking that she must have sprained an ankle while skipping across the uneven surface of the pebbly beach. When we got there, she simply pointed across the bay towards the glacier. My first reaction was to say "yeah, I know, that's the glacier."

But Dan looked at the scene and understood at once what she was trying to show us. "She's right," he said, "This is the best spot along the beach to photograph the view." A child made us retrace our steps to see what we could not see for ourselves. But the most precious thing wasn't the scene - it was that she called us back to see what we had missed, when she could have just let us walk on blindly.

The bay through Lea's eyes: a hole-y iceberg in the foreground, pointing across the icy sea to the curving glacier

Still not quite getting that the scene she had placed before us was meant to be savoured, we pressed Lea to get up and hurry on towards the elevated lookout point at the end of the bay, where her parents were heading. She simply replied, "Could you tell my mother that I'll be here on the beach, please? Thank you." She was in no hurry to go anywhere. In her opinion, she already had the best seat in the house.

Waves crashing into ice and bursting into an icy cloud

Well, kids being kids, Lea changed her mind in a split second and raced over to her parents. Together, we scaled the upward winding trail that wrapped the cliff to the mirador. There, Lea decided to give us an impromptu French lesson and insisted that we repeat the numbers one to ten in French correctly before she let us proceed down for lunch.

Cold cold us! Un, deux, trois... can we go down yet?

After a simple picnic lunch, where Jim and Gaby asked questions about Singapore and we quizzed them on life in France (and Lea and Cedric chased each other around on the lawn), our guide took us to a few lookout points for panoramic views of cloudy blue glacial lakes.

While the name of the park is "Torres del Paine", it has nothing to do with pain. "Paine" means "blue" in the language of the indigenous tribes

A hostel in the middle of the lake

Executing one of my famously-low jumps

The thunderous Grand Waterfall

Gotta keep close to the ground cos the winds were so strong!

Check out the video that Dan created, showing footage of our arrival on the Navimag at Puerto Natales and our day at Torres del Paine. (He's getting good at this video thing - puts together clips in a jiffy!)



Early the next morning, we bid farewell to the Valois family. We exchanged website addresses for our travel blogs. Lea and Cedric even have their own pages which they update with text and photos on the family's trip website! Lea gave me her email address (yes, she was busily replying mails on her Gmail account in the hostel) and was delighted when I presented her with a list of the numbers one to ten in Chinese. Everyone was really glad that we had gone to Torres del Paine the day before. Cos looked what happened overnight!

The hotel backyard - all white!

The van that we took to the park

4D, anyone?

I used to think that I had to choose between starting a family and traveling the world. That it was either one or the other. That backpacking with children was a crazy notion, much less backpacking in South America with them. That children were obstacles to travel.

But they are not.

This is what traveling does. It opens your mind to new possibilities. That are all certainly doable.

Face To Face With Pio XI

I came across this quote today:

"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware." - Martin Buber

I don't know much about Mr Buber except for the fact that he's pretty dead now. But what he said more than a hundred years ago describes how we unwittingly ended up visiting a glacier while on board Navimag's passenger ship from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales. Well, that is if you take the quote literally (but I'm sure Mr Buber had deeper insights to convey through his wise words.)

When I booked our places on the 4-day journey, nowhere on the Navimag website did it mention any glaciers along the ship's route. So we first heard about the Pio XI glacier during the welcome briefing after we set sail from Puerto Montt.

We thought, yeah, okay, so we're just going to sail past a glacier and squint at a minuscule sliver of ice from a distance. Ho hum. We've had close encounters with a couple of glaciers in New Zealand before so we didn't think much of it.

Well, if the tour guide on board had told us that Pio XI is the largest glacier in the southern hemisphere, we might have paid more attention.

If we had known that Pio XI is as big as Santiago, with a surface of 1,265 square kilometres, we would certainly have been more enthusiastic.

If he had highlighted that Pio XI is one of the few glaciers in the world that are actually still advancing (most glaciers are receding due to global warming), and that it was growing a few metres every day (in the 1940s, it grew 5km over 30 years!) we would have better prepared ourselves to witness some spectacular ice falls.

And if we had remained unaware of the fact that we were not just sailing past a big ice cube - but instead, coming face to face with a giant tentacle snaking seawards from an ancient ice field - we might have just been content with one lousy picture snapped from the comfort of the warm cosy lounge.

But thankfully, the tiny kiasu flame in me roared to a bonfire when I saw everybody else cram the front of the deck for a prime view of the glacier (a full hour before the ship actually reached it), and I staked out a corner for myself on the emptier lower deck, fighting cold, wind, rain and hail for my meeting with Mr Pio The Eleventh himself. At that time, I still thought that we were simply going to sail past with the glacier on our right, so I positioned myself on the starboard in anticipation.

As we neared Pio XI, I spotted some oddly-shaped white stuff bobbing on the surface. Thankfully, Ananda, a Malaysian Indian and the only South-East Asian whom we have met on this trip so far, enlightened me before I pointed out that there was styrofoam floating in the water.

"That's an iceberg." Whoa. Really? It was hard to believe that I was actually staring at an iceberg. But I reckoned that since Ananda has been staying in New Zealand for the past 11 years, he has to be pretty familiar with icy sights such as these.

I believe you belong in a glass of Coke, and not the sea?

Hailing from the tropics, the idea of going to the beach - be it in Singapore or on one of our sunny neighbours - is to get some sun. Nice, hot, blazing sun which warms the water to a pleasant 29 degrees Celcius or so. Relatively cool enough to offer some refuge from the heat, but also warm enough for us to enjoy a good long salty soak. It was rather bizarre to see icebergs floating merrily past my very eyes. I didn't even want to imagine how cold the water was.

Merrily merrily merrily merrily, life is but a dream (but these icebergs are real!)

Watching Pio XI grow larger as we approached, I realised that the glacier was no longer on the ship's starboard, but looming right in front of us. We were rapidly moving head on into the icy white wall! Okaaaaay.....

Rubbing noses with a huge tongue of ice... just waiting to lap us up....

The captain brought the ship to a crawl and finally to rest, right before the mighty ice field. He deftly turned the ship from side to side, alternating between facing the port and starboard into the glacier. The hundred-odd passengers who had crammed the narrow bow, clicking their cameras furiously, gratefully fanned out to either side for a photo with the largest glacier in South America.

My moment with Mr Big of the icy world

Suddenly, a thunderous shot rang out. Without warning, thick columns of solid ice crumpled and caved towards the sea, crumbling into white powder as they tumbled downwards. HOW EXCITING!!!! Another crack sounded through the air. Then another. And another. And another. That's how active Pio XI is. I swung my camera from one end of the glacier to another, running up and down the deck, and trying to anticipate the position of the next ice fall. I watched Pio XI pour and shovel piles of white dust off its face in a series of gushing powder-falls. I watched silently as a river of ice, running tens of kilometres inland, weighing thousands of tonnes, moved towards me. What else can a person feel but immense awe and wonder to one's very core?

Nature in motion

Face to face with Pio XI, I noticed that the ice took on a distinctive blue tinge. It seemed to glow with a clean, pure, blue light. Ever wondered how white snow transforms into blue ice? And how come not all ice (such as the ice cubes in your Coke or ice-kachang dessert) appears blue?

Snow looks white because of the presence of air particles in the ice. The small air pockets reflect and scatter light particles, which appear white to the human eye. In the case of glacial ice, which is basically tonnes of snow compacted into dense sheets of ice over time, fewer bubbles are present. Thus, light can penetrate the ice fully without encountering any air particles and getting scattered. Similar to why objects appear mostly green and blue in deep water, the shorter red wavelengths in light energy are absorbed within 2 metres into the glacier, leaving only the longer green and blue wavelengths. Since the human eye cannot detect any red light in the glacial ice, the ice appears blue to us.

Okay, I hated physics back in school, so I had to look that up on the Internet. I hope that I managed to make some sense back there!

Pio looking blue

We were really lucky to have gotten so close to a growing glacier. We only found out upon disembarking that Navimag only makes the visit to Pio XI in the high tourist season, which runs from November onwards. Reason is, it's usually still very rainy in October, which makes it impossible to see the glacier from the boat. But for us, summer came early, and we were blessed with a once-in-a-lifetime meeting with Pio The Great under clear sunny blue skies.

Skies so blue that Dan got tricked into going out without his winter gear on! Other tourists actually took pictures of this crazy Asian guy running around in a T-shirt, berms and slippers!

We had initially planned to detour to El Calafate in Argentina to visit the Perito Moreno glacier, also one of the remaining growing glaciers in the world, advancing at a rate of 2 metres per day. Since we have been blessed with this unexpected chance encounter with Pio XI, we can now take El Calafate out of our itinerary, which saves us lots of time and some money.

So it's true that you can't plan your itinerary down to every single detail. Unexpected visits just keep popping up. Hooray for secret destinations!

Eat, Sleep & Ship

The poor Chileans have a really hard time when it comes to country maps. With their skinny noodle of a country stretching 4,300km from north to south, their maps have to be in the form of:

(i) a huge movie poster-sized board;
(ii) a long narrow trail of paper resembling Rapunzel's never-ending rope of hair; or
(iii) a collection of at least 5 or 6 smaller maps, each showing a slice of land (which is a pain for travel planning.)

So when I tried to pinch an image of our route map off Navimag's website, I had to upload it in 4 different sections below. In total, the 4 images only represent one third of Chile's entire length.

By the time you read this caption, your right index finger should have gotten some exercise from all that scrolling

Stretching across 1,500km, Navimag's passage through the Patagonian Channels is the longest ferry ride in the world. We had booked our places on the boat about a month before departure, which was scheduled for 30 Oct. Being the last departure from Puerto Montt for the low tourist season, prices were still at their lowest at US$299 per person for a 4-day 3-night journey, inclusive of meals and accommodation in the lowest category of cabins (which is basically a bunk bed along the corridor.) Moving into high season just a week later, prices were set to rise to US$500 for the same entitlements.

Hurrying to board the Navimag ship before the summer crowds and summer prices arrive

With the boat just slightly more than half full, we got upgraded from Scum Of The Earth class to the next class of cabins - a quad-share windowless box. But hey, at least we had a door and 4 walls now. Upon being shown our cabin, we were pleasantly surprised to find that only our 2 bags had been delivered to the room... Could it mean that we had the whole 4-person cabin to ourselves? We waited with bated breath for our room-mates to arrive.

The ship blew its horn and set sail from the dock. Still no room mates.

YES!!!!

Whoo hoo! And we're off to Patagonia!

Not that we don't like meeting new people. But the cabin was really tiny. Even with just the two of us, we had to squeeze around each other and our bags. Plus, whoever had to room with us would probably have voluntarily downgraded themselves to the corridor bunks for the full 3 nights to escape from Dan's snoring, which is not terribly loud (provided I fall asleep before it starts) but within the confined space of the cabin, it would have been thunderous to untrained ears.

That's all the space there is! No space for a bathrooms either - we had to use the shared toilets and showers

Upon arriving in Santiago on 25 October, the hostel owner there had told us of the recent terrible weather along the sailing route, and had advised us to postpone our trip by 1 week to allow the weather to clear up. He clicked on The Weather Channel website and showed us dismal-looking cloud and rain icons marching steadily through the next 10 days. He warned that in bad weather, we wouldn't be able to see anything from the boat at all. We were highly reluctant to postpone our departure, given the onset of high-season prices in November and also, what were we going to do in Santiago for a week till then? So we stubbornly stuck to our guns and prepared to ride out the bad weather, should there be any.

While in Santiago, we chanced upon a couple of lost backpackers wandering around the neighbourhood in search of a place to stay. Before I could stop myself, I opened my mouth and told them that our hostel was just around the corner. I even handed them a flyer with the hostel's rates. Only then did I remember the consequences of a similar do-good action earlier in Huacachina, where I had also gallantly provided information about our accommodation to a fellow traveller on the bus, resulting in us having to share our room with him. Ah well. It doesn't pay to be selfish when it comes to sharing information about cheap and good accommodation. Plus, I knew how unpleasant it felt to arrive fresh in a big new city and to be wandering along the streets with a heavy pack under a quickly-darkening sky. We could only hope that these 2 guys wouldn't transform from weary backpackers to rowdy drunks during the night.

I casually mentioned that maybe my good deed would amount to good karma, which would in turn equate to good weather over the next few days on the ship.

Well, well, well! Check out the glorious blue skies and golden rays in the photos below! :)

Walking on sunshine

Well, you can't exactly tan in a bikini out here, but it's sunny and that's good enough by Patagonian standards!

Guess which legs belong to the cold tropical guy? But hey, he makes long thermal underwear look sexy and isn't shy to show them off under his berms!

A path of sunshine lights up the dark waters

That said, we did have a few overcast moments and light drizzle but these didn't last for long. In fact, the rain and fog helped set the mood for some of the places that we sailed past.

Uh huh, just the slight touch of gloom and doom here please as we're passing the shipwreck. Thank you.

We also got tossed around a bit on the second night as the ship ventured out into the Pacific Ocean and encountered some "small" waves, "just" 2 to 3 metres high - hardly anything to rattle our teeth or shake our bones. Instead, all that rocking only lulled us peacefully into deep slumber. Once back in the calm sheltered fjords, the rest of the journey continued on a very uneventful note.

Given the lashings of creamy soup and cheese doled out with our meals, I think most guests were thankful for the calm seas. I didn't have very high expectations when I saw the cafeteria-style set-up (grab a tray and accept what's handed out to you) but the food turned out to be pretty good! For breakfast, we had yogurt (haven't seen that for a long time), cereal (finally!), hot oatmeal (I last ate that in July), eggs, ham and cheese. And to top it all off, we got brownies. But because it was so very strange to eat dessert in an early morning meal, I saved the brownies for afternoon tea. But hey, who's complaining about being presented with chocolate first thing in the morning?

Lunch and dinner menus included staples like potatoes, rice, pasta, salad and fresh fruit (kiwi was in season!) But what really got us raving were the huge pieces of fresh salmon and hake, fished right out of the chilly Patagonian waters. Even though he only got his jowls around one piece of chicken over those 4 days, my furry blue Chicken Monster was appeased with the offerings from the sea.

Unlike a cruise liner, Navimag's main responsibility is to bring people from Point A to Point B, so it doesn't call at other ports en route, and passengers can't disembark at anytime throughout the 72-hour journey. But Navimag tries their best to entertain you anyway. Each day is peppered with short lectures in English and Spanish on the flora, fauna and glaciers found in the Patagonian Channels. Local movies and documentaries such as March of the Penguins are screened. Guests can also purchase cards for the only over-water Bingo game in the whole of Patagonia. BINGO!

Amidst the daily activities, people would occasionally crowd the deck for the day's highlight, such as when the vessel called at Puerto Eden on the third day to drop off passengers and pick up new ones.

Puerto Eden at a glance

Zodiac and speedboats are involved in the quick exchange of passengers

The highlight of the fourth day was when the huge vessel had to navigate an exceptionally narrow channel, dotted with windswept islands. Breakfast was postponed just for this event! Everyone lined the sides of the deck and watched with bated breath as our floating giant slowly inched its way through the watery narrows, barely skimming past the dangerous line of rocky outcrops flanking the ship. Once safely through, the captain blasted the horn to signal success!

It may look like a pretty big gap between us and the rocks but when you're on such a big vessel, such gaps are but the breath of a whisker.

Although pricier than traveling by bus down the Carretera Austral - the main highway running down Chile's spine to Patagonia, sailing was a welcomed break from life on a bus. We enjoyed eating hot meals fresh from the kitchen instead of chewing on cold dry sandwiches filled with strange-tasting pink pate. We sipped hot coffee and tea in the morning, which we usually decline on bumpy bus rides, for fear of dousing our laps in hot liquids. No need to ration our drinking water or worry when a clean toilet was next going to appear. No need to lug our bags between hostels and bus terminals. We had proper beds. We could shower (and piping hot showers too!) We could walk about while traveling.

As you can see, there was lots to celebrate on board the ship!

After almost 72 hours of eating, sleeping and shipping in the Patagonian Channels, we arrived at our final destination, Puerto Natales - the gateway to Chile's famous Torres del Paine National Park.

But more on that later!