One of the reasons we went so far south, other than to see the park, was to take the Navimag Ferry back up through the Chilean Archipelago. The ferry journey takes 4 nights and 3 days to sail up through the channels from Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt.
We didn't board the ferry until well after 9:00 pm, but we went down to the harbour in the afternoon to check out the boat.
We finally got to our cabin around 10:00 pm. This is a photo of Puerto Natales from our cabin window at about 10:30 pm.
Although we boarded around 10:00, the ferry didn't leave the harbour until after midnight. So when we woke up the next morning we were already well on our way. Although the weather on day one wasn't great, we could still spend some time outside on the deck admiring the scenery and taking a few photos.
One of the positive points of rainy weather is the tremendous rainbows that are visible. I'm not sure I have ever seen a complete rainbow from one end to the other that looked like we could reach out and touch it.
The ice flowing in the water certainly made it clear that even though this is summer in Patagonia, swimming is not an option!!
When it got too cold or wet to be outside, we spent time in the dining room playing cards or watching movies.
This is a photo of Puerto Eden, a small village we passed along the way. Dean and I couldn't help but feel the similarities between this ferry trip and our ferry trip in Alaska.
The weather on day two was much better and Kelly spent most of her day reading on the top deck.
We passed this small island with a statue on it. The captain announced that it is good luck to through coins to the statue. I should have taken a photo of all the people leaning over the side of the boat throwing money.
The weather cleared up and the views were fabulous. Along the way we saw dolphins, sea lions and some people - not me - even saw a whale.
Everywhere you looked there were snow capped peaks and islands galore.
The sun actually got to be a little too hot and Campbell and Kelly took shelter under a deck to read.
They fed us 3 meals and day and we really couldn't complain about the food. It was good and plentiful. You are allowed to bring on any drinks you would like, so we made sure we had enough wine to go with our meals throughout the journey.
Although there wasn't a lot of other traffic on the water, we did pass the odd ship along the way.
We didn't spend a lot of time in our cabin because it was just too small and too hot. But Kelly did relax up on her bunk with her book.
We arrived in Puerto Montt early in the morning, had breakfast and then went ashore. Again, I think we were very lucky with the weather for this trip. I have no doubt some people spend the whole three days in rain. There was one section of the route that went across open sea and there were quite a few seasick people on our boat, but I can only imagine how bad it could have been had the weather been bad. All in all, it was a great experience that provided some tremendous scenery and gave us all some much needed down time.
