Puerto Eden, Chile

On the Ferry to Puerto Natales

April 10, 2008

- Don Henley

After spending some time on Chiloé waiting for the boat to leave for Puerto Natales the day had finally arrived, as had the time for the boat to leave, however we were still sitting in port as the boat continued to be loaded. Our scheduled departure of 4pm was about three hours past when they finally untied the ropes and the boat’s powerful motor pushed us out into the darkness. There were no views from the first night, except for the city lights slowly fading away behind us. I was lucky enough to be in a cabin with only one other person, another man from England traveling on his own.

The boat wasn´t even half full with only about 75 passengers so there were many empty cabins, and as this was the first sailing of the off-season, meaning a much discounted price, they used a smaller boat as well, with a capacity of about 225 people compared to the larger boat with a capacity of 345 people. Luckily I had already met about 8 of the other passengers at the place where I stayed in Puerto Montt, and the others were a large mix of young and old foreign tourists with only a few Chileans. The waters were extremely calm because we were sailing in the channels formed by some of the 14,000 islands in Chilean Patagonia. In the middle of the night as we moved south past Chiloé the boat was exposed to the open ocean and there was some swaying from side to side but by then everyone was long since asleep so nobody felt the effects of the movement.

The second day brought cold cloudy weather and rain, confining everyone inside for most of the day. There was a brief clearing in the early afternoon and the sun came out for a few hours but then the rain returned for the rest of the daylight hours. The scenery, at least what was visible in the near distances, consisted of lots of uninhabited mountainous wooded islands as the boat worked its way through the channels, some narrowing down to less than 200 meters wide. There were some sightings of various birds, lots of sea lions, perhaps some penguins, and a few dolphins. There was a lecture during the day about one of the indigenous tribes that used to live near Puerto Eden, and they showed the Motorcycle Diaries in the late afternoon.

Unfortunately, there was no hot water on the boat and they said that the problem couldn’t be fixed until the boat returned to Puerto Montt in a week; this meant that no one fully showered the entire trip. I don´t know if it was related to the hot water problem but there was also little to no heat in much of the boat. My room had no heater and the vents were actually blowing cold air all over much of the boat. This made it cold enough in my room for the beer that I had brought on-board to be enjoyed with only the natural refrigeration of the room. The second night was when we were scheduled to round the outer edges of the islands and cross the open ocean on the way to a new series of channels that we would follow all the way to Puerto Natales. This approximately 12-hour crossing was known to have some very rough waters and the crew of the boat advised everyone when to take their sea sickness pills. Unfortunately, in a stroke of terrible timing, they served dinner at just about the same time that we were entering the open ocean. This was probably not the best plan as there were people carrying trays of food weaving in and around the dining room and many people barely ate before heading to their rooms to lie down.

The next morning at breakfast there were a lot of haggard looking people who had had restless nights and there were a lot of barren food trays as no one felt much like eating. The poor weather continued with more rain, mist, and clouds. On the third day we passed an old Greek shipwreck from the 1960´s, now used as a bird sanctuary, and a salmon fishery on a remote island. In the afternoon we arrived at Puerto Eden, a small and remote fishing village, where we anchored in the harbor and some small boats off-loaded supplies and brought on eight new passengers. In season you are actually able to disembark here for a few hours but not in the off-season. After mooring for a few hours we were back on the open ocean for our last night at sea, which turned out to be quite smooth compared to the previous night. We played Bingo on the boat and there were a few prizes for the lucky winners.

On the fourth day we were scheduled to arrive in Puerto Natales in the early afternoon. The days and nights in the cold and the lack of heat had finally added up to drive down the temperature in my room to a balmy 43 degrees Fahrenheit, cold enough to see my breath. The boat navigated through the narrowest point on the trip, a mere 80 meters and then shortly after lunch Puerto Natales came into view. The weather had actually reached a new low for the trip, with a temperature of 25 degrees Fahrenheit (-4 C), cross winds of 20-30 knots (25-35 mph), and sleet, combining to make it utterly unpleasant. As I was debating whether or not to rent gear and camp in Torres del Paine National Park for four nights, this made the decision pretty easy. Although I was later to find out that this weather system was part of a weeklong Antarctic cold front that had been passing through the area making things particularly miserable. Finally after nearly four days at sea we had arrived at Puerto Natales, gateway to Torres del Paine National Park where some outstanding scenery and excellent hiking awaited.