Today was about the largest national park in Chile called Vicente Perez Rosalez Parque in honor of the Chilean who turned this remote area into a well-known tourism and agricultural zone. It was supposed to be a sunny day that was going to stay cool in the 50s for most of the day, but the weather gods had a different idea and as we tried to board the tender from the ship into the port terminal at 8:15 AM to go to shore, we had to wait in the stairway because the water in the harbor here in Puerto Montt was simply too choppy to subject a bunch of older well-heeled Viking passengers to that sort of experience. Once at the terminal we boarded our bus (we were Bus #2 of some 27 Viking shore excursion buses today…such is the life of cruising even on an exclusive line like Viking). Our tour guide, Cathy, who turned out to be a very knowledgeable Argentine woman of French origin, was wonderful and easy to understand, so we were all happy campers in our bus. In fact, she and Jose, our driver, were good enough at wrangling our 34 sorry asses on and off the bus at the various stops such that we kept coming in first among equals against the other buses. That’s always a good competitive thing on these shore excursion days.
We were all very impressed by what we found in and around this heretofore unheard of town in Northern Patagonia. It had been devoid of people altogether until 1853 when the newly-formed state of Chile offered immigration incentives to European countries and got buy-in from some 30,000 Germans, who moved here and began carving out a life for themselves. Unlike Valparaiso with its British origins, Santiago with its Spaniards, and yet other Chilean towns with their Italian immigrants, this alpine gateway to what has become an outdoorsmen’s paradise, was Germanically-driven. The influence is hard to mistake. This Lake District looks decidedly like Bavaria or Switzerland much more than anything Latin American. I have often thought that what has distinguished Chile from countries like Argentina was the unique blend of its European heritage and its very separate identity of its own. Chile was just too damn far from Europe, given the barrier of Cape Horn, for its inhabitants to do otherwise than make this beautiful country their one and only permanent home. That sense of permanence has been an immeasurable advantage to a country in a continent where extractive colonialism was the rule of the day. By contrast, Chileans brought the best of their Europeanness and combined it with the indigenous strengths and wonders of this resource-rich land and created a REAL country and not a nice vacation home for themselves.
We spent the morning waiting for the Osorno Volcano to pop up through the clouds in all its Mount Fugi-like conic glory. Its snow-covered peak is a year round reminder of the glacial Surroundings while the streaks in those snowy fields also remind us of the global ravages of climate change that is upon us. We took a pleasant 45-minute boat ride (or “navigation”, as Cathy called it) around Emerald Lake with its crystal-clear blue glacial melt water. That water then led us to a series of water rapids that gushed downhill to eventually empty into the brisk waters of the Pacific. After our trek up the rapids sluiceway, we went into Puerto Vargas, which very much resembles a Swiss village on the shores of Lake Zurich. We all commented how easily any of us could move to this idyllic spot and feel right at home. Such is the irony of this distant part of Chilean Patagonia, directly adjacent to its Argentine kissing cousin of Bariloche.
From our lunch spot in Puerto Vargas, after a short shopping sojourn where Kim, much to my amazement, found nothing to buy, we headed back to our tender boat for the last boat of the day out to our waiting ship in the harbor. Unlike the morning rough seas, the afternoon waters were completely calm and glassy. We were pleased to find that our pals Ann & Chris had finally found their way from New York down to Puerto Montt and into their onboard awaiting cabin. Viking was apparently nothing but gracious in helping them fix their broken-play trip and get them to us no worse for wear if two days late. Viking knows a good potential future customer as well as anyone and Ann & Chris were already singing their praises for accommodating the errors of their airline partners.
As we dined at the upscale Chef’s Table Restaurant for Ann & Chris’ first Viking meal, we watched the ship pull out of harbor and start its journey south among the famous Fjords of Chile…comparable to their Northern Hemisphere brothers in Alaska and Norway. Our meal had a decided Asian tone with wok beef at its core and coconut shrimp and a refreshing mango dessert on either end to bracket the palette. As we all told tall tales at the table, the ship took us closer to our interim destination of the Amalia Glacier as our next point of interest.
We have now mostly gotten our sea legs and are gradually getting used to walking the deck hallways in a combination of rolling uphill climbs and downhill rushes. The usefulness of the hall railings has not been lost on any of us. Our first of two sea days on our way to Punta Arenas has been sunny and uneventful as we have blended a soothing day of whale-watching lectures and English high tea to get us through to yet another dinner adjacent to the ship’s fantail. It’s only taken a day, but everyone now knows everyone else’s baseline life story, as sordid as that may be. As usual, any grievances have been directed to me and everyone only loves Kim all the more (funny how that always seems to happen). Ann is just happy to be hanging with her gal pal while Chris seems to be letting his natural Samson locks and three-day stubble out to establish his bona fides as NOT a member of the Tim Conway deck-shuffling crowd. Meanwhile Mike & Melisa and Faraj & Yasuko are breaking Promenade Deck step-counting records as they loop the deck loop around and around.
The average age here on a Viking ocean cruise is somewhere between 70 and Senility, but the quality of the clientele comes through every time we sit down to meet a new couple while we wait to gather for our next meal. Traveling by cruise ship has only become more interesting in our world gone politically mad. I would suggest that everyone, regardless of political orientation, is trying to be on their best behavior. This is likely due to the fact that we all know we are a captive audience to one another for another fortnight yet. So far the range has been from rabid Texas Republicans who have tried to prove that their liking of Democrat Ann Richards from Texas political days gone by makes them more moderates than extremists, to a mild-mannered Maryland couple who thanked me for diplomatically standing my liberal ground while not aggravating our Texas pals too much. The Aussies and Canadians onboard are all just wondering what’s next from the home of the brave and the land of the free. As we all hear bits and pieces of the ongoing tariff wars, we all try to enjoy what little foreign travel time we may have left on this crazed planet being run by one wannabe king after another. Meanwhile, the Chilean fjords slip by and more and more billionaire Ferrari owners are being born every day.