Laguna San Rafael (Tues 2/23)

Stats:
- Zipo....a day off the bikes and on the water!!!

About a week ago, we made the decision to take a slight detour to Puerto Chacabuco for a high speed catamaran trip to see the national park called, "Laguna San Rafael".  For many, it is considered the highlight of a trip along the Carretera Austral. 

We woke to mostly sunny skies.  After a quick cup of coffee in the hotel lobby, we boarded a bus with our fellow travelers for the day. It was an all day trip --- breakfast, lunch, and dinner and everything in between. 

The boat headed south, navigating through the fiord and various water passes. Compared to our pace on a bike, this thing cooked --- 25 knots! To us, it appeared that 1/2 the passengers were traveling together and French speaking. The other 1/2 appeared to be speaking Spanish. 

The views were specatular --- water, mountains, glaciers. We were treated to views of the highest peak in Southern Chile.  At 4058 meters, it is almost as high as Mt. Rainier. The climax of the scenery was our arrival into Laguna San Rafael. The water was filled with ice bits and icebergs from the tide water glacier. The catamaran creeped closer and closer to the face of the glacier and then the show began. While we have seen more impressive sights of ice (Antarctica for sure), we have never seen a better show of melting ice. The glacier made sounds like my feet creaking in the morning. However, the sounds frequently resulted in exploding towers of ice plummeting into the sea. Whole sections, the full height of the glacier erupted into waterfalls of ice. I can only guess the sizes. At times, it looked like balls of ice the size of a house rolling off the glacier.  Sometimes, the ice would rise up from the water before everything came tumbling down. Most of the time, it appeared to be in slow motion.

The passengers were loaded into small zodiac boats and zipped around through the sea of icebergs and brought closer to the face of the glacier. While in the zodiac, we saw several massive calves of the glacier and at least two were the full height. The average deepth of the glacier is 300 feet, so it was an impressive wall of ice. The waves created by falling ice looked huge.  We thoroughly enjoyed the boat ride, the scenery and the ice show. 

"1000 year old ice" was plucked from the sea and brought back to the catamaran. As we left Laguna San Rafael, the party started ---- whiskey and glacier ice!  Being in Chile, we opted for Pisco Sours and ice. For a while, we sat in the lower level of the boat, enjoyed the views, and read. Then, we ventured upstairs to the lounge. The party was in full swing and we noticed an important split in the crowd. Downstairs, the French were sleeping or reading. Upstairs, the Chileans and Argentinians were singing karaoke and dancing. Now, you may not know this, but Arn is a secret lover of karaoke. I can now say he has sung karaoke in Spanish!  We danced a bit and luckily both of us were tall enough to touch the ceiling for stability when the boat started rocking.

Dinner was accompanied by fantastic views of Volcan Baca as we returned to the fiord leading to Puerto Chacabuco.  Nice finish to a great day. The five day forecast looks good, so tomorrow we ride!!!