FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4 - CHILEAN Fjords

Just as we turned our light out last night, our stewardess came in and anchored all the deck furniture and told us to secure our breakable stuff in the cabin as we might have rough seas later. Well, about 2:45 this morning the ship cleared the protected waters of the Archipielago de los Chonos and headed into the Pacific Ocean. The ship started that lovely figure eight that we remember so well from the Drake Passage. We do manage to sleep through with only minor problems, the bathroom shelves self emptying and the TV and VCR remotes taking a header. When we get up and look out, all we see is lots of angry grey-green water, high swells and sea spray with dark grey skies and rain...the sea is very angry this morning. We are really having a hard time moving around though the ship isn’t!. The TV says the wind is between 45 and 55 mph...a gale.

We head to breakfast on the one operating elevator...the others have been turned off as the doors are sticking if they try to open at the wrong place in the swell. The dinning room is more crowded as breakfast in La Veranda on deck 11 is like eating on a roller coaster ride. Several times, as we eat, there is a loud crash as dishes go flying in the galley and the dinning room. We are seated near a window and mostly all we see is green water and spray, the seas are running higher than the window. The Captain comes over the PA and says, "We are moving a bit due to rough seas (that’s an understatement) with wave heights to 20 feet and swells at 6 second intervals. We will continue like this until about 1PM when we finally enter the system of canals. Please be careful moving around and hold on the hand rails!" Then Ray, the cruise director, comes on and cancels several of the morning’s activities due to the seas, including the port talk for the next port, because the Destinations Director is feeling the seasand has Mal de Mer! That gets a laugh out of the passengers.

Dick goes back to the cabin and Carolyn goes up to the Observation Lounge on Deck 12 for a birds eye view. The weather is getting OK now with some sun and a few scattered showers. The swell intervals are really obvious from this vantage point and you can almost time each shutter of the ship.

Dick comes up about 12:30PM and is eager to eat so we make several attempts to ride the elevator down to Deck 5. Finally we give up when the doors stick on five and the elevator takes us back to six! We get off and walk down. The dinning room is in a bit of chaos. It is crowded and they have brought staff down from the La Veranda to help. We order hamburgers that take forever and when they come out, Carolyn’s has china chips on the plate so they have to start over on hers.

As the Captain said, the seas calm down as we exit the Gulf of Penas (Sorrows). The sun is still mostly out and it is a nice sail up the various canals to Canal Falos which we enter around 4PM.

It takes about two hours to reach the Thunder Glacier at the end of Iceberg Fjord off the canal. There are still patches of sun on the glacier so it is a little easier to see, though it doesn’t have a very wide face like some we have seen.

Probably the most interesting thing about this was crossing the line where the fresh milky white water of the glacier melt and the green sea water meet!

This Glacier comes from the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, where as San Rafeal came form the Northern Patagonian Ice Field. The two ice fields are separated by a fjord. Leaving the glacier we sail through the fjords for about five more hours.

Since the glacier viewing turned out to be so late in the day, we canceled our Prime 7 reservations that were made before we left home. It is 6:30PM or so before we leave the glacier so we go back to the room to change for dinner. As we dress, Carolyn looks out to see the scenery and sees the Mariner of the Seas coming up fast from behind us. As she passes, all the passengers must be taking pictures because the ship is twinkling like a Christmas tree.

Neither of us is really that hungry after a hamburger for lunch. Dick orders a ribeye steak and the pear and lettuce salad, Carolyn has the pear salad and tagliatelle verde al prosciutto e asparagi other wise known as spinach pasta with ham and asparagus. Dick has this as an appetizer and we both give it high marks. The night's red wine, Bogle Petite Sirah, is good also.

Back in the room the stewardess has put everything on the floor as we will be out in the Pacific for about two hours later tonight on the way to tomorrow’s fjords and glacier.