The Whales of the Strait

One major highlight of any Patagonian cruise is the wildlife. From the decks of any vessel, and on land excursions, passengers can enjoy the sight of countless birds – many of them unique to the Southern Hemisphere – and marine mammals such as elephant seals and sea lions. Literally and metaphotically, though, the biggest attraction is the whales.

On Argentina’s Península Valdés, Puerto Pirámides (pictured above) is the continent’s main whale-watching site; from July (mid-winter) to November (late spring), pods of southern right whales arrive to mate and give birth. Most visitors arrive from the town of Puerto Madryn, which has cruise-ship facilities, though Madryn gets many more overland travelers. Most Pirámides vessels are larger catamarans that can seem crowded, though it’s not quite mass tourism – some smaller rigid inflatables get closer to the animals.

For visitors to southern Patagonia, though, there are more intimate options, viewing southern humpbacks (pictured above) in the western Strait of Magellan. In January and February, operating out of Punta Arenas, Cruceros Australis does special whale-watching itineraries that make a detour to Isla Carlos III before returning to their usual Beagle Channel route to Cape Horn and Ushuaia. In rigid inflatables, passengers can get even closer to these gregarious (and enormous) animals.

I’ve never taken that specific itinerary, but I have visited the western Strait on two other occasions. A decade ago, I took one of the earliest trips with Whalesound, which converted a small river vessel from Argentina in a comfortable shuttle for a dozen or so travelers to Isla Carlos III, where it had set up a dome-tent camp (pictured above) connected by boardwalks to its dining room/clubhouse (pictured below). During the day, the ship took us to see the whales, but it was also possible to hike to sea lion and penguin colonies.

More recently, in January, I took a two-night one-day excursion on board the M/V Forrest (pictured above) with Punta Arenas’s Expedición Fitz Roy, which has rehabbed a vessel that formerly hauled wool around the Falkland Islands, where I first saw it in 1982. The accommodations are cozy – cabins with two or four bunks each – but the dining lounge is comfortable and the exterior decks provide plenty of opportunity for cetacean close-ups. The Forrest also makes a side trip to Isla Santa Inés (pictured below), shuttling passengers ashore for close-ups of the glacier there.

Overnighting in Antarctica?

Looking at the map, many travelers overestimate South America’s remoteness because, beyond the tip of the continent, the next thing they see is Antarctica. In reality, at a latitude of 56° S, Cape Horn (pictured below) is almost exactly the same distance south of the Equator as Edinburgh is to the north, but the vast open waters of the Southern Ocean make a dramatic contrast to the landmasses of Europe, Asia and North America.

Even then, though the South American continent tapers to its tip in Argentina and Chile, Patagonia is the gateway to the white continent in a time of global warming concerns. Nearly all Antarctic cruises sail from the Argentine port of Ushuaia, on Tierra del Fuego, but there’s another option – the Chilean city of Punta Arenas has the only airport that offers commercial flights with Aerovías DAP.

When I made my only visit to Antarctica, in late 2004, it was a fly/cruise trip with Antarctica XXI, a Chilean operator that was offering the chance to avoid two days of stomach-churning sailing across the Drake Passage to the Antarctic Peninsula, whose sheltered waters are calmer. We flew from Punta Arenas to King George Island (Isla Rey Jorge), where Chile and several other countries have research bases, and then boarded a chartered Russian vessel for our week-long cruise (since then, Antarctica XXI has acquired its own ships).

The Antarctica XXI cruises are expensive, but there’s now a briefer, cheaper alternative for those who want to sample what Antarctica has to offer. Through its Antarctica Airways service, DAP now offers day-trips and overnight stays at an “Ice Camp” on King George Island (near the Chilean settlement of Villa Las Estrellas, pictured above).

My feeling is that a day-trip doesn’t allow enough time to see King George’s sights, which includes an elephant seal colony and many penguins (such as the Adelies pictured above), as well as the Russian Orthodox Church there. Even the overnight trip, though, requires some flexibility – with crosswinds, flights from the South American mainland cannot land at King George’s narrow airfield, as I learned when our departure from Punta Arenas was delayed a day in 2004. If your schedule is tight, the trip could be tricky.

Patagon Journal Takes Off; Cape Horn's in Dutch

A few months ago, I mentioned the fund-raising efforts of Puerto Varas-based Jimmy Langman to launch a print version of his bilingual Patagon Journal. As I watched the deadline approach and donation pledges appeared to be barely trickling in online, I have to admit that I was pessimistic that he would garner enough funds for this worthwhile project.

I’m delighted to admit that I was wrong. In an email I received a few days, Jimmy reports that he was “happy to report that the magazine is to leave Gráfica Andes printers in Santiago tomorrow and will be on sale at newsstands in Santiago and other cities and towns around Chile this weekend. The magazine will also soon be available at several other outlets in Chile, including the Patagonia and Andesgear stores throughout the country.”

Jimmy’s campaign, organized through Kickstarter.com, “successfully raised modest funding…including securing a major sponsorship deal with the Quiksilver Foundation. We recently received a small grant from the Weeden Foundation in the United States. That, coupled with a Herculean effort to sell some ads to a new magazine still not yet in print, has finally gotten this effort off the ground.”

I haven’t yet seen a hard copy of the 80-page magazine, but Jimmy has sent me a PDF version that shows the Journal’s promising content. Among the stories are his own extended interview with environmental philanthropist Doug Tompkins (whose wife Kristine I have interviewed and published recently in this blog), Jack Miller’s exploration of the truly remote Cordillera Sarmiento, and Evelyn Pfeiffer’s account of the Paine Circuit’s creation. The video above, narrated in Jimmy’s Spanish, provides an idea of the content.

Other articles include Héctor Kol’s analysis of the salmon industry’s travails and Tim Vandenack’s tale of hitchhiking the Carretera Austral (pictured above). The coverage is not exclusively Chilean – as witness Península Valdés and its great right whales, the new Glaciarium ice museum (pictured below) in El Calafate, and restaurants and book reviews, plus some stunning photography.

All in all, it’s a promising debut that will require dedication to expand its circulation – while the print media are still important in Chile, producing a newsstand magazine remains a demanding task. Readers can do their part by subscribing to Patagon Journal online, or purchasing it at Chilean newsstands.

Disclaimer: I am a member of the Journal’s Editorial Advisory, but have no financial interest whatsoever in it. It is essentially an honorary position.

Cape Horn’s in Dutch

Known as Cabo de Hornos in Spanish, Cape Horn is South America’s southernmost tip, and notorious as a graveyard for sailing ships – to whose crews the wandering albatross sculpture atop Chile’s Isla Hornos pays tribute. The Cape’s original name, though, is Kap Hoorn, named by navigators from the Dutch city of Hoorn in the 17th century.

As the 400th anniversary of Cape Horn’s discovery approaches, Chilean and Dutch authorities are collaborating on a series of events to commemorate the role of sailors such as Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire (whose name graces the strait between the big island of Tierra del Fuego and its outlier of Staten Island; the latter was originally a Dutch name, since converted into Spanish as Isla de los Estados). At the moment, only the Chilean operator Cruceros Australis is authorized to put passengers ashore at Isla Hornos, on cruises between Punta Arenas and Ushuaia, but Argentine operators continue to hope for future access – from Ushuaia, it would be just a day trip to stand at the tip of the Americas.