Day 8 -- Straits of Magellan

BIn Melbourne they say you can experience all four seasons in a day.  Here you see them all in an hour!  One minute the sun is out and it is a pleasant 10C.  Five minutes later it is showering, and as the temperature drops to around 7C it turns to sleet.  Driven by a 37 knot south westerly wind, the frozen rain drops really sting one's face.  A hint of snow a little later, then a period of dull, completely overcast and misty weather that reduces visibility to a few hundred metres.

Before dawn we left the shelter of the fjords and trekked south in the Pacific until near lunchtime.  Then we turned south east and entered the Straits of Magellan.  If you have a look at a good map of this area you will see that the passage Ferdinand Magellan discovered in 1520 does comprise two narrow stretches of water that border the southern edge of the South American landmass.  He was looking for a shortcut from Europe to the East Indies, and this route cuts days off the trip around Cape Horn for sailing vessels.  However, traveling east to west is against the prevailing winds and currents; little room for tacking against the wind and strong currents led to many shipwrecks.  For most (until steamships arrived) the somewhat less dangerous though longer route around Cape Horn remained in favour.

We are moving west to east.  The first strait runs south east with the bottom tip of the Andes and the snowfields visible (sometimes) to port.  Starboard from my balcony are the barren granite isles that form an archipelago all the way down to Cape Horn:  hundreds of them, nearly all uninhabited but for wild life.  During the night we will turn north and east into the second strait that leads to the Atlantic.  Our port of call at Punta Arenas is halfway up this strait on the mainland.

Before breakfast our Sports channel showed NRL Thursday Night footy live, so I watched the Cowboys give the Roosters a 40-0 trouncing.  Later I attended a lecture by our resident historian giving interesting background to the Tierra del Fuego and ports of call ahead.  Salad for lunch (please admire my dietary restraint), then a nap.  Mid-afternoon, too cold and windy to do laps of the deck, I paced out 30 minutes on the treadmill in the gym.  

For St Patrick's Day the ship was decked out with green and white banners and shamrocks everywhere.  Before dinner I enjoyed a half hour listening to the Amber Strings playing Irish melodies. Then I tried the Moderno Cafe for dinner.  It's one of the specialty eating places.  After salad they visit your table every few minutes with a new cut of grilled meat on a large skewer from which they carve a serve to your plate.  Four types of beef, lamb, roast chicken, ribs, grilled pineapple.  I didn't make it to the chicken before I turned my card over to say stop!  I'll have to do a lot of walking in Punta Arenas tomorrow to work that off.  My table looked out to the north, and I couldn't get over just how stunning the view was of the southern Andes as they come right down to the water.

Just a couple of atmospheric photos today -- see them Here.