Day 04 - 10/Jan/24 - Chacabuco, Chile
After a couple of days at sea, we arrived an hour early into the anchorage at Chacabuco, Chile. As we were approaching our anchorage, it was interesting to watch tender #13 be extended and lowered to the water and then be retrieved and put back in the stowed position. I'm imagiining that this was just a test as the tender was later used all day to ferry passengers from ship to shore and vice versa. Since we didn't have an excursion until noon, we took our time getting ready.
What I found interesting was that there was NO communication about where 4-5 star Mariners were supposed to assemble to get a tender ticket for their priority disembarking. On every other. HAL ship we would get at least one letter in our stateroom telling us what to do and/or where to go. Even a call to the front desk couldn't answer the question. We just happened to overhear someone discussing the process. Even the Cruise and Travel Director referred us to the front desk even after I told him they had no answer. It was very strange.
In any event, we went to the Atrium and waited a few minutes before we were put on the next tender. It was a short 10 minute ride to shore and we were put ooff on a nice little wharf. I should mention that the tenders on this ship look virtually brand new and they are pretty nice. The Chacabuco port facility is quite small and there was WiFi available. Most people were on HAL excursions and they left from the adjoining parking lot. There were also shuttle busses that would transport people from the port to the "domes" which adjoined the city park. The domes housed a number of craft vendors and also many private shore excursions left from there. I observed also that one could purchase a 2-3 hour excursion for about $40US/pp. After cruising through the vendors and noting some items we might purchase later, we headed walking into town.
Parenthetically I need to add a little story. During the tender ride, we chatted with Judy who joined the ship in San Antonio. She had originally planned to join the ship in Puerto Montt. Her original flight from Dallas to Santiago got cancelled and she got rerouted on a flight to Buenos Aires and then to Santiago and then to Puerto Montt. So she got to Santiago and was about to board her flight to Puerto Montt when she received a message from her traveling companion that she was to meet up with that the port stop in Puerto Montt had been cancelled. It had to take a lot of courage to not get on the flight! If she had gone there, she would have missed the first week of the cruise as she could only get on in Punta Arenas or Ushaia. In any event, she made the ship around 3am the morning of our departure. It's another lesson about coming in early for departures as one can never be too sure about flights or other transportation.
Chacabuco is a very small port which Ed, Cruise & Travel Director, compared to Skagway, Alaska. Trust me, it's much smaller. There is one gas station and "small" supermarket about 15' x 30'. Most of the services are found in Aysén which is a nearby city that came highly recommended to visit. We walked the city and back to the domes where we purchased a pair of beanie caps for Antarctica. At noon we boarded our HAL tour bus which would take us on the 15 minute drive to the Parque Aiken del Sur which is a private 500 hectare park devoted to nature conservation. Our first stop was at a visitor center for bathrooms and a look at some introductory displays. Back on the bus we were transported to the trailhead. Our bus members were split into two groups. The larger group went with the bus #27 guide and seven of us went with the guide from bus #28. We were in group #2. One big bummer about the bus trip was that the microphone system didn't work, and it was though to hear.
The gravel trail was well marked and maintained and the forest was extremely dense. It's a second growth forest that has grown up after devastating fires that come through during the 1920's to 1940's. During the hike, we saw no animals or birds, but we did hear the Chicaqua a couple of times. There were a few steps at one point but for the most part the trail was pretty flat. The turn around point for the hike was a pretty waterfall called Old Man's Beard.
When we got back to the trailhead, it was a short hike up a steep road to the lodge where there were great vistas of the large lake and in the lodge we enjoyed Pisco Sour drinks as well as non-alcoholic drinks. While a cultural show was being presented they also served a number of small snacks including mini empanadas, chicken on a skewer, cheese on toothpicks and some little bread and cream cheese appetizers. At 2:40, we reboarded our bus and by 3pm we were back at the pier. At $170 per person, I was a bit apprehensive about the value of this excursion, but in the end, I think it was worth it given than a portion of the fee goes to preservation efforts.
Angela and I then headed back up towards the domes but encountered a taxi driver with whom we negotiated for about $40 a two hour trip to Aysén and back. It was an enjoyable trip which took us across the largest suspension bridge in South America, a visit to the Plaza de Armada, a fishing pier, and the Agua Muerte or Dead Waters where the river turns on itself. Angela could communicate with the driver pretty well in Spanish and I used Google Translate. We were dropped back off at the port at 5pm. It was a very well spent $40.
One observation I made in the forest and again at Aysén was the existence of very large bushes of fushias. It was incredible to see these very large bushes after experiencing them only in hanging baskets at home.
Our evening entertainment was the second performance of Claudia Bossle. Again, she was okay, but afterwards we went to Billboard Onboard where we listened to 3 sets of his all request sessions. He mixed up the songs by type and genre and he provided lots of back stories about many of them. It was quite enjoyable and he has a very good singing voice and for us a high entertainment value. While there, I uploaded a couple days of my blog as I'd fallen a bit behind.
Tomorrow is the first of two sea days and much of it will be spent in the Chilean fjords. I'm looking forward to that.
Comments
Post a Comment