It'd been a cause of slight anxiety for a while: who would I end up bunking with through the barren glacial narrows of Chile???
When I unlocked the door to my cabin I found three steely-faced Latinos unpacking, who didn't seem too glad to have me as their roommate either. Turns out they were doing a motorcycle trip circling South America, beginning in Colombia and ending in Rio. They'd bought their bikes in the States, had them shipped to Colombia from Miami and already have buyers (at 3x their original cost) for them in Rio before they fly back home.
That said, the trip was very loose and mellow: the anti-cruise, without frills and with a palpable feeling of adventure. The vessel, the Evalengelista, was a cargo/passenger freighter which mainly ferries supplies and other industrial equipment to Patagonia. There is almost no other way to send supplies to except through this shipping lane (other alternatives: by plane or drive into Argentina and then back again into Chile).
Fellow travelers came prepared with much boxed wine, rum, books,and playing cards/board games for those long days and nights on the water. Because there were only thirty passengers (ship capacity: 200), the vibe was quiet, friendly and quick camaraderie was forged (especially after a few bottles of wine/pisco sour).
The food was surprisingly good - freshly prepared simple, but tasty, dishes (baked salmon, pot roast, hake... all the seafood seemingly fresh) and seconds were ungrudgingly given when requested (obviously, I did this many times). Believe it or not, these were some of the best meals I've had in Chile. (But then again, I didn't want to have unnecessarily expensive meals by myself. When alone, I'd rather have street food or something more expedient.)
The weather was unpredictable and became wilder and windier as we headed deeper into Patagonia. Sunny one minute, blustery the next moment, the landscapes just as dramatic. Small glaciers peeked through misty mountain tops. I can only imagine what it must be like farther south.
However, if this is what it's going to be like to camp and hike through Torres del Paine National Park I might have to consider other options!
Highlights: just lazily cruising past the fjords the entire day, the scenery slowly rolling past the windows; nights playing poker with other travelers; doing nothing active but seeing at a lot; stunned by the scenery and the dramatic Patagonian weather.
Another highlight: after dinner a distinguished film director (whom I'd been spying throughout the trip; he just looked very different from all the other travelers, plus he had a couple of guys with him handling film equipment, etc., while his was the eye behind the viewfinder) invited the travelers to a screening of a documentary of his which had been screened at Cannes and which I'd seen in SF. I nervously approached him and told him I'd actually seen it and that I'd liked it very much. He asked if I could introduce it at the screening. (I politely declined; I said I didn't have the words to appropriately do the task justice. I was also too starstruck. Plus, a few glasses of wine already consumed would've guaranteed botching the effort.)
Other notables: saw some dolphins & seals, sailed past a Greek ship stranded (1968) in the middle of a pass and which now serves as a lighthouse.
Arriving into Puerto Natales was fraught with excitement. The ship approached port tilted because of the wind and everyone went on the bow to "fly". Also, we waited for two hours a few hundred feet away from the pier - we couldn't dock immediately because of the current/s.
And the bikers? We became poker buddies.
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