Puerto Williams
It's official! We were in a hurricane yesterday.
We woke today to nice calm seas, and a balmy 52°. As we entered the Beagle Channel, a Chilean naval vessel brought a pilot to our ship to navigate us through the fjords to Punta Arenas.
We had our last landing today, at Puerto Williams on Navarin Island. It's on the Beagle Channel across from Tierra del Fuego. Maurice, the anthropologist on board, has lived there for decades among the Yamana people, and provided a nice briefing on this southernmost village in the world before our landing.
Puerto Williams is a fishing community of about 2,000 residents. Their quarry is not fish, but king crab. Although this is not the crab season, we saw small fishing boats in the port and stacks of crab traps outside some of the homes.
This is a small working village and, except for a little museum and a few little souvenir shops, there was not much to see. The museum was focused on the Yamana Indians who first lived here, and had dozens of historic photographic portraits of the Yamana from the 1920s.
The Chilean government has recently undertaken several improvement projects to make the village more of a draw for ships Antarctica-bound or cruising the Chilean fjords. Road construction was ongoing everywhere.
Armed with maps provided by our ship, we set off on an 8 km walk that looped to nearby Robalo Bay. We passed the yacht club, from which sailboats depart to sail around Cape Horn, and the naval base. After the whites, blues and grays of Antarctica, it was nice to see bright colors in the houses and little boats.
At the naval base
Another curiosity is the bow of the Yelcho, the ship that rescued the 22 members of Shackleton's Endurance expedition who were stranded on Elephant Island for 137 days.
Evidence of strong westerly prevailing winds
Choose one: the boat was too high to clear the bridge, or it was stranded and provided a convenient support for a proposed bridge.
Robalo Bay looking across the Beagle Channel to Tierra del Fuego
Puerto Williams doesn't stand out as much of a destination in itself, but it was lovely to walk without our heavy rubber boots and multiple layers of pants and coats.
As we cruised west, we were treated to a golden sunset and albatrosses over the Beagle Channel.
No comments:
Post a Comment