Puerto Chacabuco Revisited

In early 1979, when I first headed to Patagonia, I dreamt of the scenic Chilean channels and fjords beyond the city of Puerto Montt, but I had only a limited notion of them. I’d never met anybody who’d sailed the 900 nautical miles to Puerto Natales, the gateway to Torres del Paine.

Part of the Puerto Montt shoreline, with Volcán Calbuco in the background

At that time, the rusty freighter Río Baker carried cargo between Montt and Natales, but without formal passenger service—the captain’s whim determined whether or not you boarded. Instead, I settled for the freight and passenger ferry that then connected Puerto Montt with Puerto Chacabuco, the port for the Aisén regional capital of Coyhaique. That 24-hour voyage was my first Patagonia adventure, a route that I’ve just repeated on Navimag’s ferry Edén.

Waiting to board Navimag's ferry Edén, the night before sailing

The Seno de Reloncaví, as seen from the sea

Puerto Montt’s natural setting on the Seno de Reloncaví always reminds of Puget Sound, where I grew up in Washington State—the Chilean port is no Seattle, but its inland sea has the same densely forested shores and islands, with several snow-topped volcanic summits in the vicinity. To the southwest, the big island of Chiloé compares well with Vancouver Island and, as we sail south, the landscape resembles coastal British Columbia and the Alaska Panhandle.

On the Edén's bridge, a chart of the route through the channels

In fact, nearly the entire route to Chacabuco is an inland sea where the waters are usually calm but, as we pass Chiloé’s southern tip, at the Golfo de Corcovado, there’s a surge of open ocean where the Edén starts rocking slightly—not alarmingly, but noticeably. Soon enough, though, we pass through the gulf and the waters calm down.

Recycling and disposal bins aboard the Edén

Shortly thereafter, I see crew members moving bags of trash and recyclables. In several places around the ship, labeled bins remind me that, on my previous voyage here, that vessel’s crew dumped debris off the stern and into the sea—something that would never happen today. Then, as I visit the bridge, we spot a school of dolphins and the pilot tells me he’s seen orcas in this area. Marine mammals, and the penguins, appreciate the change.

The Fiordo de Asian, approaching Puerto Chacabuco

I can’t recall much about the accommodations back then, but I believe we had narrow reclining “Pullman” seats, rather like those on a Greyhound bus. Nor do I remember anything about the food and, frankly, I didn’t much care—the goal was to see this remote region. Compared with that, the simple though compact cabins on the Edén are almost unimaginably luxurious, and the cafeteria food filling and nutritious enough.

Puerto Chacabuco's ferry ramp awaits the Edén

En route then, I met a pair of young German doctors who had shipped their VW campervan to South America and were headed for Tierra del Fuego—the exact same place I wanted to go. After arriving at Puerto Chacabuco, they drove me and a German backpacker up the narrow verdant valley of the Río Simpson to Coyhaique, across the border to the Argentine town of Río Mayo, and then to the Atlantic coast city of Comodoro Rivadavia. There we all separated, but I soon managed to hitch a lift all the way to Ushuaia with an Argentine trucker.

The Río Simpson valley, between Puerto Chacabuco and Coyhaique

Back then, there wasn’t much opportunity to explore this sector of Chilean Patagonia overland—only parts the now completed Carretera Austral (Southern Highway) even existed. Now I’m fortunate enough to have my own car here, and I’ve since driven the highway many times without ever tiring of its rugged mountains, thundering rivers and pristine lakes, and its scenic coastline and pioneer settlements. I’ll be doing it again for the next couple weeks.

A Park To Oneself? At Laguna San Rafael

When southbound travelers head to Patagonia, a frequent motive is the opportunity to see something “off the beaten path.” One of their bucket-list sights might well be Chile’s glacier-studded Parque Nacional Laguna San Rafael, southwest of the regional capital of Coyhaique, which remains one of the region’s least visited parks – technically, at least.

Laguna San Rafael is one of Chile’s largest national parks, where the ice from the Campo de Hielo Norte, the Northern Patagonian Icefield, still reaches the sea. I have viewed the jagged seracs of the park’s namesake glacier (pictured above) - the world’s lowest-latitude tidewater glacier - on three separate trips, but I have never actually entered the park.

In fact, even though thousands of visitors view the glacier up close and personal every year, only a relative handful ever enter the park – as recently as 2009, only 158 persons (82 Chileans and 76 foreigners) actually set foot in it. That’s because the jurisdiction of the Corporación Nacional Forestal (Conaf), which manages the park, ends at water’s edge – where the Chilean navy exercises authority. Thus, almost everybody arrives on catamarans and cruise ships that spend a few hours before heading back to Puerto Chacabuco (pictured below), the port from which they sailed.

On my most recent visit, a few years ago, I took the catamaran Chaitén (pictured above), which sailed from Chacabuco at 8 a.m., arriving at the glacier around 1 p.m. after a couple brief stops to view sea lion colonies en route. Over the next couple hours, the crew shuttled the passengers on rigid inflatables along the glacier’s face - not too close, to avoid the crash of melting towers of ice and the waves they create - on a magnificent day that yielded the best views I’ve ever had of the advancing river of ice and its surrounding peaks.

In the course of my Chilean travels, I have also taken the Navimag ferry from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales at least half a dozen times, and it still amazes me that, in a world of six billion people, such an enormous area could be almost unpopulated - human settlements, or any sign of population, are virtually absent in an area that resembles the Alaska Panhandle. Verdant forests rise from the sea to mountains bearing the last of the winter snow, among other peaks of perpetual snow and ice, but they remain largely nameless, to me at least.

In reality, except for the handful who earn their livelihood at sea, this is still the nearly trackless wilderness it was when John Byron - grandfather of the famous poet Lord Byron - was shipwrecked here in the 18th century, and when the Beagle, with Darwin and FitzRoy aboard, anchored at Laguna San Rafael in 1835. In one sense, the forested hillsides and islands of archipelagic Chile differ little from the barren wastes of the Atacama desert - there is a verdant monotony to them. Yet in the Atacama the evidence of human habitation and activity is present everywhere, while in the lush south it's simply overgrown, if indeed it ever existed. There is no simple way to orient yourself, other than by the cardinal directions - in general, you’re going north or south.

While seeing Laguna San Rafael other than by sea has been difficult, that’s starting to change. This past year, the total number of visitors rose to 4,728 – still only an average of 13 per day, though that’s misleading because almost everyone goes between mid-October and April. I had hoped to go last January with the operator Río Exploradores, which now takes hikers by road and sea to the park for day trips, and for one- and two-night packages with dome tent camping from the town of Puerto Río Tranquilo, 228 km south of Coyhaique by a mostly paved highway.

It’s not cheap, but prices compare favorably to the catamaran and cruise ship excursions; unfortunately, there was no space available on the one day I had to spend in Tranquilo (which, however, has its own brewpub (pictured above) and several other excursions, like the nearby Capilla de Mármol on Lago General Carrera, pictured below). I’ll give it another shot this upcoming season, though.

Stockholm of the South? The Santiago of Scandinavia?

A few years ago, taking the catamaran from Puerto Chacabuco to Laguna San Rafael, I found

myself seated among a group of Swedes whose tour guide was a Chilean who, exiled after the military coup of 1973, had lived in Sweden ever since. Given my own Scandinavian origins – I had three Swedish grandparents and one Norwegian – I was curious how a Latin American had adapted to the notoriously dour Scandinavian society.

Throughout the Southern Cone, Scandinavians have a history, such as the Norwegian polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen and Swedish explorer Otto Nordenskjöld, whose great-grandson I met a couple years ago in Argentina; Lago Nordenskjöld (pictured above), in Chile's Torres del Paine, honors his memory. Some settled in Argentina, where San Telmo’s Dansk Kirke is a Buenos Aires landmark, the city’s Club Sueco (Swedish Club) is famous for its smorgasbords, and the seaside community of Necochea has a strong Danish presence.

Recently, at home, we’ve been watching the Swedish police drama Arne Dahl, in which one of the main characters is Chilean detective Jorge Chávez, who suspects his Swedish partner Paul Hjelm of racism. Even though Sweden has welcomed many immigrants, that strain of xenophobia is a recurrent theme in many Nordic noir novels, films and TV series, such as Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Henning Mankell’s Wallander, in recent years.

My Chilean acquaintance, though, said he had found it easy to adapt to Swedish life. In fact, he said, Swedes were not so different from Chileans, at least in their stoic public personae – both behave far differently in private. In public, Swedes’ default behavior is lagom – roughly translatable as “moderation” – but in private or in unusual circumstances, they can be more animated, and far more critical of employers and other authority figures.

In fact, in the aftermath of the 1973 coup, quite a few Chileans took refuge in Sweden and many have remained. I have been to Sweden only once, a day trip to Malmö from Copenhagen some 40 years ago, but I’m planning to go for a couple weeks next May and June, flying to Oslo and returning from Stockholm, where I’ll be curious to learn more about the Chilean presence – and perhaps even enjoy a pastel de choclo at Sabor Latino before returning to California.