It's not hard to tell by the pictures that it was a cool, wet morning (nobody in the pool and nothing on the big screen!) but the scenery was spectacular!
To get to the glacier, the ship headed inland through a series of islands and channels, and finally into a fjord. The temperature was about 7 degrees Celsius, and the daytime high would reach about 15. That doesn't sound too bad . . . but the wind in this part of the world is legendary. We'll have more on the wind in a future edition.
Here in the fjord, however, the wind wasn't a factor.
As we moved closer to the glacier, ice started to appear on the water.
We were about 50 degrees of latitude south of the equator. That is about the the same as Regina is to the north, but remember . . . this is the height of summer in this part of the world!
Like most of you, we didn't know anything about the Amalia Glacier, and somehow I got it in my head that it was a huge iceberg! NOT!
The glacier is located in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field and is about 1 kilometer wide and 40 meters high. Toward the right side of this shot is an "ice river". From a different angle, we could see that there were 3 of them leading to the main body of ice.
Amalia, and the other 47 glaciers in the area, make up the third largest fresh water reserve in the world.
The ice field is supplied by intense snow storms throughout the entire year (Not today thankfully!) but is gradually shrinking.
The blue colour is due to the glacier's immense weight which has pressed the oxygen from the ice. That seems odd but that's what we were told!
The Amalia Glacier sits at the end of a rather narrow fjord, and after an hour or so, the captain turned the ship 180 degrees. The on board side thrusters helped with this maneuver. The side thrusters are also used to move the ship away from a dock when leaving port.
It took a couple of hours to reach the open waters of the Pacific and a couple more hours of sailing south before heading inland once again and into the famous Strait of Magellan.
We'll have more on the Strait in a future edition.
Maneuvering through this historic strait will take us to our next port of call, Punta Arenas, Chile. To get there, we will have to sail for the remainder of the day and through the night at a speed of about 15 knots.
We have a shore excursion booked in Punta Arenas that we are looking forward to. That edition should be on line in a few days.
Hasta Luego,
Norm y Charlene
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