Greetings from  Puerto Chacabuco Chile  

So much world; so little time. My last postcard from Coyhaique ended with indecision, you may recall. Still puzzling over the logistics for an onward trek south, I put that on hold for a while and took a two day side trip over to Puerto Chacabuco. That is the departure point for a highly promoted thirteen hour $299 cruise to experience the San Rafael Glacier. Retracing the route we used to reach Coyhaique a few days earlier, I again enjoyed the awesome shear cliffs and grassy meadows along this paved section of the Austral highway. Soon we turned off and headed west. Just before arriving in Puerto Aysen we passed a three turbine wind farm.  

Puerto Aysen used to be the main shipping port for this part of Chile, but over the years has become unnavigable forcing the government to develop the new facility at Puerto Chacabuco. Puerto Aysen is the largest village in the region, but still not much more than four or five blocks of commercial buildings and scattered dwellings. Fifteen thousand people are said to make it their permanent home. One local bus company provides regular onward transportation to Puerto Chacabuco some fifteen kilometers further west.  

Puerto Chacabuco; blink and you could miss the few warehouses and other structures before reaching the wharf at the end of the road. Total population is under 1500. The Chilean Armada maintains a base here and a complex of bright yellow apartment buildings near the wharf serves as government housing for the personnel assigned to the base. Perhaps forty or fifty metal clad wood frame buildings house the civilians working in the area. The "supermarket" is a tiny mom-and-pop store stocking the bare necessities of life on the frontier. On the hill above all this nothing sits the magnificent four star Hotel Liberias Del Sir. It is the only real hotel in the area. The catamaran ship used for the glacier trip is owned by the same company that operates the hotel at the port. My most determined bargaining only got the posted $170 room rate down to the $130 rate everyone pays. However, it is an excellent hotel, first class in every way and very convenient for the early morning boat departures. When I asked the gracious receptionist where she had learned her excellent English, Pamela sheepishly replied, "Fargo North Dakota," adding that everyone from America always found that funny. Immediately recalling the film by that name, I stifled a belly chuckle myself. I stayed there both the night before and the one after the full day cruise. Photos taken while around the hotel are here. 

All Catamaranes del Sur passengers at the hotel got an early morning wake up call and were instructed to be in the lobby by 7:15 when a bus would transfer us to the ship a couple blocks away. That day clouds completely covered the sky leading me to surmise the promised rain would soon follow... it never did. We left the Puerto Chacabuco Wharf at 08:00 for a thirteen hour journey in our comfortable Catamaran. The early part of our voyage reminded me of sailing the Puget Sound in Washington many years ago.  

While guests included Americans, French, Italians and Germans, the majority were Chileans. Most passengers traveled with a partner or group including one American couple with two playful children, four and six. Strangely, I felt totally comfortable in this inherently romantic setting, though the only single taking the cruise. On a long voyage with little to do much of the time everyone has a chance to meet everyone else and to engage in entertaining conversation. Several Chilean passengers became convinced that with all my wild wavy white hair I had to be a movie star, despite my repeated assurances to the contrary! Others informed me they were delighted to have the opportunity to practice their English... or more likely, to secretly enjoy my struggles with their language. Socializing in many languages among the mostly older groups of couples continued throughout the day, especially later in the upper deck lounge.  

Everyone spent some time on the chilly exposed after deck. The frigid air didn't keep anyone from lingering out there to admire an endless parade of exotic scenery. As we navigated the channels among hundreds of islands, passengers milled around snapping photos of green islands, the white ice-bergs floating in the calm blue sea and finally the fluorescent blue glacier itself. The few defiant smokers on the voyage, banned from practicing their habit inside the cabins, sheepishly loitered out there, too.  

The frail old lady with piercing eyes I had met a few days earlier on the ferry from Castro to Chaitin is held erect in a custom harness managed by her two care givers. Declaring her determination to have at least one more great adventure, she is being driven the full length of the Carretera Austral highway connecting central and southern Chile, stopping at hostels along the mostly gravel single lane road without advanced reservations. I am traveling the same challenging route under similar circumstances and know the complications of such an itinerary. Her audacity makes me wonder what I'll be doing in twenty three years when I reach her age. For a while we share adjacent seats in the lounge and engage one another in lively conversation. She speaks five languages, English fluently. "They expropriated my land." she murmurs without explanation. We had learned earlier from her companion that her wealthy American husband and she owned extensive vineyards before the Communist government redistributed vast tracts of land and assumed this to be her meaning. 

"The government just took it away from us." she elaborates.

"Without compensation?" I asked. 

"They never paid for anything." she whispered matter of factly. Little by little I learned snatches of her life, often with the help of her companion and caregiver filling in the unintelligible segments I missed.

The 95 year old former Chilean tennis star is now barely able to walk. Still, spunky Mimi Leatherbee fascinates everyone. She even prepares to board a slippery salt spray drenched Zodiac for the close approach to the treacherous glacier wall. All decked out in a bright red life vest and with the physical assistance of crew members and her two caregivers she joins the swaying Que I am in for boarding rubber boat number five. In the distance we can hear the massive ice face splitting. Like the crack of a gaucho's whip, the sound precedes the spectacular calving. Miniature tidal waves follow the mountainous chunks of ice that plunge into the lagoon. At the last minute the ship's captain declares the glacial activity and choppy waters too dangerous for any but the most able people and gently urges her back into the warm cabins. Undaunted and thrilled at her own personal close approach, she has had her adventure. 

It took six hours of high speed cruising to reach the brilliant electric blue glacier that tumbles into Laguna San Rafael. Several other boats already sat anchored in the lagoon when we arrived. One of the larger ships apparently spent the night there according to rumors circulating among the passengers and crew. The ship's main cabin is furnished like the interior of an airliner: rows of three comfortable First Class airline seats on either side and a pair of seats down the middle. Airliner serving carts made the job of distributing food quick and efficient. From the promotional material I expected something a bit more elegant, table cloths and silver perhaps?  

During the time on board we were served first class airline style meals for breakfast, a mid-morning snack, lunch, a tea time snack and dinner. Chunks of thousand year old ice taken from small icebergs floating near the glacier added a mysterious allure to all the free alcoholic drinks passengers cared to drink in between the formal meals. Every chunk of the millenary ice contained air bubbles, making me wonder what mysteries scientists might have solved by analyzing the ancient trapped gases. The open bar became a popular conversation spot for many passengers, a couple of whom needed a bit of assistance getting off the boat.  

Along the glacier polished walls to the left of the glacier geologists have placed year markers showing the location of the San Rafael Glacier face over the past several decades. The entire glacial mass moves toward the sea at about two feet per hour. Officially designated the Campo de Hielo Norte, the leading edge of the massive ice flow is slowly receding, something clearly visible to every tourist who visits this accessible example of the Patagonia Ice fields of Chile and Argentina. Evidence collected by the geologists suggests this has not always been the case. For eighteen thousand years the glacier has slowly cycled with changing climatic conditions, some years declining, some advancing. Today, nearly all glaciers around the world are on the decline. Voluminous evidence shows the principle cause is atmospheric warming, something that began most recently with the industrial age around 1800. The correlation between civilization's increased production of greenhouse gases and the receding glacier face over the past twenty years is well documented. While some still question the causes of the melting, there is no doubt this big ice cube river is slowly fading away.  

A 13 February 2006 Time Magazine article, Is America Flunking Science? reports interviews with knowledgeable scientists both within and outside the government who accuse the current U.S. administration of basing critical environmental national policy decisions on ideology instead of hard scientific evidence. Nowhere is the problem more evident than with the ongoing debate over greenhouse gases and global warming. So alarming is the problem that technical, ecological, as well as political solutions are all under consideration. 

The story of my early teen bicycle trip in the last postcard and the eerie song it recalled, led to more musings about my early wandering years. Following that youthful bicycle escapee, other ventures took me hitch hiking around the American West, dropping out of high school in the middle of my junior year when faced with an irresistible urge to get away from it all. Eventually, I paused long enough to restart my formal education. Struggling with the unforgiving discipline of academic life and an insatiable wanderlust, my heart still roamed. Another song released at the very beginning of that period spoke to my restless spirit: The Cry of the Wild Goose performed by Frankie Laine and Tennessee Ernie Ford in the early 1950's soared on the charts: 

Tonight I heard the wild goose cry
Wingin' north in the lonely sky
Tried to sleep, but it ain't no use
'Cause I am the brother to the old wild goose
My heart knows what the wild goose knows
And I must go where the wild goose goes
Wild goose, brother goose, which is best
A wanderin' foot or a heart at rest
The cabin is warm and the snow is deep
And I've got a woman, she lies asleep
When she wakes at tomorrow's dawn
She'll find, poor critter, that her man is gone
REFRAIN
My woman was kind and true to me
Thinks she loves me, the mournful she
She's gotta learn that it ain't no use
To love the brother to the old wild goose
REFRAIN
Spring is comin' and the ice will break
And I can't linger for a woman's sake
She'll see a shadow pass overhead
She'll find a feather beside my bed
REFRAIN 

An hour cruising around the lagoon and launching the several Zodiac rubber boats for closer inspection of the area adjacent to the active face of the glacier and we started our return trip back to Puerto Chacabuco. Suddenly the solid cloud canopy broke into a panorama of cotton flocked blue skies allowing the previously hidden sun to peek through here and there. An hour before we reached the port a spectacular sunset capped the day. Many of us shutterbugs took as many pictures of the changing reds, yellows, dusky blues and silver linings as we did the impressive glacier wall. The big comfy bed and cable TV were welcome reminders of civilization on our return to the hotel shortly after sunset. Tomorrow I'll head back over to Coyhaique to evaluate onward travel options: fly or bus... south or east? 

A small selection of photos taken while on the glacier cruise are here. The full large collection is here. 

Peace,
Fred Bellomy 

PS: In the process of researching subjects explored in this postcard I came across an unusually succinct and clear exposition humanity's present dilemmas. Take the time to read the short essay, Poverty and Overpopulation. It made me rethink my ordering of mankind's priorities and future prospects. 

NOTE: Pretty good machine translation of any web page or captured text is available at: http://www.systransoft.com/index.html