Monday, November 29th, At Sea in the Darwin Channel

We literally pried ourselves out of bed at 6 a.m. because we had been informed that we would enter the scenic Darwin Channel of the Chilean archipelago at 7 a.m. We stumbled around to get dressed and go up for breakfast by 6:30 so that we could get up to the Crow's Nest observation area, but were then informed that the Veendam had been delayed an hour overnight due to heavy seas and would not enter the channel until 8:00! Arrgh! Since we were already finished with our cold breakfast (the buffet line did not open that early), we went up to the Crow's Nest to pick out some nice seats by the windows.

Ultimately we were rewarded by a nice relaxing cruise down a very long fjord leading out to the Pacific Ocean. Low hills rose steeply out of the water on both sides of us, similar to fjords we have seen in Alaska, Norway, and Greenland. The climate of the Chilean fjords appeared to be very wet: The hills were covered in a carpet of green vegetation composed mostly of lichen on top, bushes further down the slopes, and the occasional stand of trees just above the high water mark.

The Darwin Channel was surprisingly narrow in spots, only about 200 feet wider than the Veendam itself, so we had a really close look at some of those hills! Thinking back to Darwin's time in the Beagle, I had trouble imagining how anyone would maneuver one of those old, square-rigged sailing ships through those narrow points, particularly if the wind was at the wrong angle.

All along the route there were salmon farms and we were accompanied by various gulls and other seabirds. In particular, we saw great flocks of "sooty shearwaters", an all-black bird slightly larger than a seagull. As we neared the end of the Darwin Channel on the Pacific Ocean side, our naturalist told us to watch for sea lions sunning themselves on the bare rock islands, and sure enough we saw a colony of at least 20 sea lions on a small rocky island with a lighthouse that was almost at the mouth of the Darwin Channel.

Once back in the swells of the Pacific Ocean, the Veendam started to rock a bit. We returned to our stateroom and I just collapsed for a nap while Monika attended a lecture on things to do in Ushuaia, Argentinia, one of our future stops. I roused myself to go to lunch with Monika and then we both attended Chris Fisher's lecture on "Fins, Feathers, and Furs" at 2:00, followed by our second session of Spanish lessons with Missy. We filled in the rest of the afternoon downloading our pictures from the preceding days and purging out all the bad ones, which saved about 20-30% on the storage space on Baby-Baby (our new netbook computer) but took a bit of time as we had to really look at each picture. That evening was another formal night, so we once again dressed up and joined Gregory and Nellie for dinner at Table 37. Since the evening entertainment was a magician, we just retreated to our cabin, where a folded-towel peacock awaited us, to sleep, perchance to dream.