The Navimag boat!

I´m so sorry guys, I´ve been really lax on the blog front. We´ve had a mad few days. I´ll try and fill you in.

So. We´d been hanging about in a little town called Pucon, trying to climb an active volcano, but the weather was too bad. So, we were sat inside, cursing the rain, and wondering what to do next on our journey.

Then we hear the word ´Navimag´. It´s a ferry apparently, and it takes cargo (and a few tourists) up and down the coast of Chile. Ooo, a boat. Haven´t done that before. My spider senses are tingling.

Off we pop to the Navimag shop, grab a page full of information, and promise to let her know what we want to book. The boats only go once a week (one northbound, one southbound). We don´t have time to catch the southbound one, as it leaves the next day. However, the northbound one leaves at the end of the week. But we´d have to get to the south to do it.

For me, this was like some kind of omen. I´d really wanted to see the Perito Moreno glacier...but we´d decided it was too far south to get to in our timeframe. But, if we had to go south anyway...it was just next door. Kind of. Close enough to get a bus to anyway.

But how to get south? We scan the internet for bus timetables. And then flights. Turns out there´s a flight leaving for the town next to the glaciers in two days time , and it´s only 130 quid. Not bad. But....but....I´m desperately torn between the budget and the value for money. The costs are piling up...but it´s the cheapest we´d ever be able to do it, and we´d get to see some absolutely amazing things along the way. And the fact that I don´t want to sit on my ass in the rain.

Argh!!

Louise: "Oh, fuck it. Let´s do it."

John: "Really?"

Louise: "...Yeah."

We grab some money and run to the Navimag shop. Run! RUN!!

Louise: (slows down) "...Wait, are we actually doing this?"

John: "...er...Yeah?"

Louise: "...Yeah....Yeah!"

It felt right.

So, the mad rush to book the boat, the buses, the flight, and the accommodation ensues. Eeep! Everything is going swimmingly. Booked, booked, booked. Tick, tick, tick.

That very day we head to Barriloche to have a look round and catch our flight on the day after tomorrow. We get there and check our emails. Crap. ´Problem with the flight booking´is never a good start to an email...apparently they need a scan of the debit card and a passport....er...no! No scanners, and no sending your private details out to random people in Barcelona. So, we spend several hours begging for translators to help us sort the problem out, and running between internet cafes, phones and airline offices. Thankfully, everything seems to be fine, although edreams (who we booked the flight with) were very unhelpful and did not clarify the problem or explain why they needed random information over the internet or what the problem was or ANYTHING. So they´re officially on my black list. But, anyway, for whatever reason, the flight was booked and sorted and everything was fine and off we flew. Whee!!

Louise: "..:The Alps are amazing aren´t they John?"

John: "Andes, Louise, Andes."

Louise: (not missing a beat) "So, the Andes are amazing aren´t they John?"

And amazing they were. We saw the sun set over the Andes, and it wasn´t even a specialist tour flight. The lakes and snow were glowing gold.

We landed in El Calafate and booked our tour to the glacier for the following day. We grabbed food and fell into bed.

The Perito Moreno glacier is AMAZING. Gorgeous. Stunning. Vast. Chilly.

We got on a boat and got up close and intimate with Mr Glacier. It´s very easy to lose persepctive on the scale in the photos. It´s as high as a fifteen story building (60 metres). There were people hiking on the glacier in a couple of the pictures, but you can hardly see them. They looked like ants.

Every so often you would hear a massive roar. It was huges chunks of ice sharding off, randomly, periodically, plunging into the water, sending huges waves flowing under the ice. Unfortunately the roar came after the fall so you wouldn´t see much if you just looked for the sound. But keeping your eyes peeled meant you were pretty likely to see a few ´calvings´ of the ice. Impressive.

Right, off we run to the overnight bus. Off to the boat!!

Owing to confusion about time zone changes and general bus inflexibility we then spent most of the next day sitting around. On the bus we travelled for miles along a dirt track across large estancias (farm ranches), laughing at the rheas. They were terrified of the bus and when it got close, they ran away, looking like prudish Victorians lifting up their petticoats to flee from this terrifying monster.

There wasn´t much to do at the dock (we checked in at about 3pm and boarded at 9pm) so we spent most of our time wandering about and climbing on statues. John was reluctant to have his picture taken with a big metal bear thing. We saw black headed swans though. By about 8pm the check in lounge was filling up - and everybody was doing that thing where they discreetly assess their fellow cabin mates for sanity and annoyingness level . John and I were testing each other on world geography so we probably came across as pretty weird. Unfortunately, on the first night, no dinner was provided, so we imaginatively improvised with jam and bread (these being the only two edible options available in the supermarket). Our tour guide for the journey was immediately nicknamed Borat, owing to his accent and very stylish moustache.

We were woken at 5.30am by the engine starting (for 5 minutes I thought it was John shivering on the bottom bunk), so we went to the deck to see the sunrise. It was absolutely freezing and very pretty. The rest of the day was spent getting to know a few of our cabin mates: Richard and Eliza, Sydney lawyers turned travellers, Thomas, a stylish, down to earth Belgian fellow, and Joe, a spacey, hippiesque philosopher with a very colourful coat. (Why, why, I did not start calling him Joseph with the technicolor dreamcoat I do not know. Next time). We visited the bridge and played with the machines, played lots of cards, and ate LOTS of food. It was great to just sit around and laugh, sleep and rest, read and play guitar.

The next day I spent mostly in bed trying to keep my breakfast down (which I failed to do. Miserably. 5 times). The bathroom was decidedly fragrant. This probably didn´t help Eliza when she ran up to the bathroom as a safety precaution, only to see and smell my redecoration efforts. Needless to say she decided to contribute to the artwork. The staff were very helpful and not at all squeamish, which made me feel slightly less awful about the whole affair. But yeah, not fun. Never been seasick before. Well, I´ve felt sick, but never actually been sick. Whoo. There´s another experience to tick off the list. On top of that, Borat comes over the tannoy "On zee right side of zee bot, peeple, yuu can see whales!!". So, not only was I throwing up, I missed the whale sighting . Still, it was probably the most fun I´ve had whilst feeling ill though...just sat on the bunk sharing stories with Eliza.

John didn´t feel too bad and even ate lunch (which only 3 people managed to do apparently). By the evening everyone was feeling much better. And hungry. We ate and drank the night away, then got the guitar out and sang into the early hours.

On the final day I tried to lie in, but in the end got up for breakfast (mmm tasty nom nom nom). More card games, reading and guitar ensued. In the evening, we found out that a horse a had given birth on the boat!! We christened the foal Eden (after the boat name), got mildly drunk, played hide and seek, and crashed the DJ booth to play tunes in celebration.

The staff came down and switched off the music. Boo!! Then they opened the bar for 5 minutes. Hurrah!! We stocked up for a crazy night of Borat jokes, improvisation, bread sculptures, and science experiments about attempting to slip on banana skins. Not as easy as it looks in the movies, you know.

Mmm, bread sculptures. Nom nom nom.