Twenty four hours in Valdivia

You know a town has a bit of a tourist retention problem when upon checking into an overpriced hostel you're offered a hefty tome outlining all the 'exciting' things to do around town. Valdivia was exactly such a place.

Punta Arenas had had it's enthusiastic tour guide who rattled off museum after museum to a newly arrived backpacker who had made the mistake of asking what there was to do around town. Granted it was me who thought it was a mistake as I tried to keep my opinions to myself and focus on putting my thoughts down in digital format.

What most of the towns of Argentina and Chile had shown us was that no matter how glowingly the guidebook describes a town, chances are we'd be disappointed. You see a 'European' feel just isn't the same as a real European town.

And yet here we were strolling around Valdivia which allegedly “just may be Chile's most attractive and enjoyable city.”

Set one at the confluence of three rivers and surrounded by wetlands the city is actually very pretty. On top of the river cruise there's forts at strategic points towards the ocean which together are the largest Spanish fortification in South America. So in our 24 hour stay we probably didn't give the town enough of a chance. But then again, that's not why we came.

Every day the city is host to the Feria Fluvial, the fish, meat and produce markets set on the bank of the river. And each day fat sea lions come out of the river and grunt begging for food. Competing with them are a stack of birds who try to grab any of the scraps the vendors throw towards them.

Arriving in the afternoon, we thought we'd have to wait until the following morning to catch the action. But as we wandered along the bank of the river we found a group of sea lions resting in the sun, probably after a long day of 'fishing'. 

Is that not the cutest face you've seen in a while?

 Of course, this is what 'fishing' looks like!

Cerro del Media & the Beagle Channel

From the top of the mountain, Ushuaia looked beautiful. Built on the hillside we'd just climbed, it's gaze seemed permanently fixed on the Beagle Channel and those travelling at the end of the world.

With just a few hours to spare before our intended boat trip – weather permitting – we'd hiked for two hours through the damp lenga forest that we'd grown used to in Patagonia. Near the top we'd slipped our way crossing a bit of snow at the edge of the tree line before reaching the lookout.

Further along there was supposed to be a lagoon so we'd followed the stone markers across the bare, rocky ground. Again, a large patch of snow covered the trail that led up the hill to the lagoon, which turned out to be less of a lagoon and more of a puddle.

After leaving big boot prints in the pristine snow on the way up, Jeff decided to create another set of marks in the snow. He slid all the way down the hill on his backside, almost hitting a rock at the bottom when his steering failed.

That afternoon the wind hadn't picked up and the port of Ushuaia was open for business. We set sail with Patagonia Adventure Explorer on the slightly crowded boat, our stern pointing towards Alicia Island.

'Island' is probably too generous a name for the hunk of rock sticking out of the middle of the channel, but it was here that an entire colony of sea lions were basking in the sun. They were a lazy bunch with not even a flipper moving to show any sign of life. As our boat neared, a few heads moved to look at us and one sea lion sat up and posed for the cameras.

Leaving the colony to their sleep we continued sailing out to Les Eclaireurs Lighthouse the little red and white lighthouse that is the symbol of Ushuaia. With it's backdrop of snow capped mountains and blue water it looked very picturesque on that perfectly clear afternoon. In fact there were so few waves, I was a little disappointed!

On Isla de los Lobos another colony of sea lions lazed in the sun, while on the other side cormorants fed their newly hatched chicks, that we could hear and see squawking in their nests.

 Spot the eggs in the nest and the couple of day old chicks.

Isla de Pajaros, another rocky island was home to a different type of cormorant which our guide was at pains to point out were not penguins. Obviously the sheer quantity of what appeared to be black and white dinner jackets fooled a lot of people, including us. The cormorants were arriving here for the summer to nest, so the colony was multiplying daily.

The final stop was on one of the Bridges islands, where we wandered windswept paths in the place where the indigenous Yamana people had once lived. Covered in low shrubs and mosses, some of which grew just a millimetre a year, the island was in the full bloom of spring.

 We took particular note of the Calafate bushes, whose berry, once eaten insures a return to Patagonia. For the moment, there were only pretty yellow flowers, but there were many options to try them in a preserved form. Our guide recommend the Calafate berry flavoured ice cream, a suggestion we took very seriously...to ensure we made it back to this beautiful part of the world of course!

At the End of the World

The next morning the sun was shining and melting the snow on the roof of the hostel. I could hear the heavy drops falling onto some sheet metal on the balcony, so I was convinced it must still be raining and therefore it wouldn't be worth getting up.

It was late by the time we set off for the glacier just above town, which was said to be no bigger than a bucket of ice. But before we'd even made it around the corner from the hostel, we'd already decided that we should investigate the options for travelling to Antarctica. One of the guys in our room had finally made up his mind to go and was buying his passage that morning.

As the little map at the port of Ushuaia shows, this is the closest place on earth to Antarctica, with just 1000km of water separating it from the frozen continent. In fact by boat it would only take around 1.5 days to cross the Drake Passage. At least that explains the cold!

Thanks to last minute specials available only in Ushuaia and a strong Australian dollar it at last seemed possible to do something I've always dreamed off but that normally is prohibitively expensive.

We wandered up and down the wharf for a while looking at the jagged peaks of the mountains now covered in a fresh layer of snow. On the other side of the Beagle Channel lay Chile, separating us from Cape Horn just a hundred or so kilometres ahead. In the harbour a National Geographic boat made us yearn for an adventure.

After an hour of wandering we did book a trip, but a significantly shorter one. We decided Antarctica would have to wait for another time.

Our boat trip that afternoon was supposed to take us to a lighthouse on a minuscule island in the middle of the Beagle Channel, as well as a sea lion colony and for a walk on one of the bigger islands. The wind had picked up in the afternoon forming very innocuous looking white caps on the little waves, which made me very happy. Just like turbulence when flying, there is nothing I enjoy more than standing at the front of a boat that's riding the waves. But apparently the port authorities of Ishuaia do not share my idea of fun and had closed the harbour cancelling our boat trip. The guide was at pains to explain to me that given the size of the waves in the harbour, they would be monstrous out in the channel. Like I needed to know the fun I would be missing out on!