On-the-Road Tales

Boarded the III de Mayo boats for a tour up the water to check out some more nature. Yep, lots of transportation on this leg. The weather got progressively worse but you could see the cattle ranches where the people led and still lead, very isolated lives cut off from the rest of society by the waterways. We saw some great waterfalls and a glacier. We pulled in at Sa dock and had a short 30 minute hike along a iceberg studded lagoon to get closer to the Serrano glacier. Nothing like what I saw the day before but still a beautiful chuck of ice. The guide told us how in 1960, the glacier extended all the way to the saltwater waterway, now it was badly receded – a freshwater glacial lake in its place and shrinking all the time. I am glad I got to see it now.

Back on the boat we were given glacial whiskey on the rocks, the rockes being a little bit of iceberg! I am not a whiskey drinker normally but how could I pass up the oppurtunity to say “last whiskey I had was in Patagonia chilled by a glacier!” I will have to find a social opportunity to drop that line haha. My table mates were fabulous, one couple was from Portugal and the other from Honduras. We spoke mainly in spanish but occasionally we would need a word translation in portugese or english and everyone would start mixing things together – none of us could talk straight but of course it could be due in part to the whiskey! I got an invitation to come visit in Honduras so I will have to add that to the travel list. The girl from Portugal actually grew up in Macau and her mum is from Angola. Both Portuguese colonies I know but I never actually met anyone who had been there.

We stopped at a ranch for lunch and had a tasty barbq with lamb, chicken, sausage. Not a big lamb fan – Nancy would have to be here to judge the quality – but tasted good to me. Our international table conversed on world politics, commercial ventures, labor worker rights it was fabulous. I could follow along and make my point but I really need to increase my political vocabulary before I go visit my 4 new friends!

I hustled after docking to my residencial, grabbed my backpack and off the the bus for the journey back to Punta Arenas.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 at 9:14 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.