IN Patagonia ON The Stella Australis @ The Glacier Alley!

I had hiked on a glacier in Kamchatka, Eastern Siberia once. There was a volcano underneath it. So it was pretty ok to think about hiking in front of the glacier here in Patagonia. But then again this is Patagonia. The Stella came into the waters that lead to the Pia Glacier at around 1300 hrs. We had a pretty relaxed morning with lunch served at 1230 hrs and the first batch got out on the Zodiacs to make a landing a little after lunch. 

I had my layers on but my hands were not covered. I was about to find the importance of a pair of hand gloves a little later. I had signed up for the demanding hike which at first seemed to be anything but that. The weather then started showing its true colors. The little bit of sunshine became snowflakes by the time we had reached the top. There were other climbers with me who were busy taking pictures of the glacier from the top but I couldn’t get my phone to work, instead, I rested my back on a stone and tried to soak in the surroundings.

The going down was always going to be tougher than the way up but it was still ok. We made the entire hike in less than 1.30 hours and by the time I was back in the Zodiac I realized that I had to take care of my fingers back on board and I had to get a drink.

After Perito Moreno, I had thought I had seen it all. The very well laid out steps and the pathway to see the Perito Moreno is replaced here at Pia with how the Perito would’ve been 100 years ago. I hope the path to the  Pia lookout at the extremes of Southern Patagonia stays with muck, rocks and a good difficulty level.

How else do you feel that you deserve the sight of a Glacier?

The Glacier Alley - Italian Glacier - No idea why the name?!

The Glacial fall is good on this one.. dont remember the name though!

The PIA glacier!

IN Patagonia ON The Stella Australis @ The Lectures

There are landings on the Expedition cruise there is no docking. The Zodiac raft takes you from the Ship which is anchored some 200 meters from the landing spot. There is obvious excitement about getting on land and knowing how the landing is going to look in the briefing a day earlier. Then there is the other sort of briefing. Lectures on the land itself. Sometimes it is easy to skip them and to just enjoy a drink or a book in the lounge bar. It is only when you sit through one of the lectures that you truly begin to relate what you see around. The same expedition team that helps you with the on land hikes talks about the land in the lectures.

Although most of the lectures are of nature, what I like about this one is that people and civilizations often make an interesting topic to talk about. In Patagonia, there is a constant reminder of how the early settlers who braved the seas and the harsh weather couldn’t really put up a fight with their fellow human beings from Europe. The colonists, like they did with other places in the world, tried to convert or desimate the local population here too. Some tribes and languages have completely gone extinct and the only surviving pure-blooded ‘Yamana tribe’ lady is in her mid-eighties.

I remember a friend of mine who lives near a jungle in India, saying “I only fear humans”.

To travel in these lands and to notice that so little has changed over the last couple of thousand years in terms of human direct influence, it feels reassuring. It is nice to know that maybe humans will never be able to do anything here, a land so wild that it only gets affected by what we do around the world. Glaciers melt and oceans rise, but I am glad that Patagonia will remain Patagonia for at least some of our future generations to see.

The lectures help and are as interesting as the landings.

 The barman!! after the hikes and the lectures

Greenland and Patagonia

I have been only for 2 nights in Ilulissat on the west coast of Greenland. It does not really give me any experience to talk about the land. The land is wild and barren. The people are indigenous with the Europeans coming here to work (and some stay) every summer as nature guides or in some kind of tourism activity. Greenland is not green! I guess that’s a known fact and since most of it is permafrost there are only algae and some moss that finds its way above the ground. Food comes from Denmark and so does the cultural influence. Sure, the locals preserve their heritage and some of them even told me that they feel closer to their Canadian cousins than they feel with Politically aligned people of Denmark. The name, Ilulissat literally means the town of 1000 floating icebergs.

The town of Ililissat in Greenland at twilight in Winter

There is a walk on a wooden pathway near the town, which leads to a lookout point on the glacier. The point that makes you open your mouth in surprise even before you open your camera lens.

So, I couldnt help but compare that memory with my view of the Perito Moreno Glacier here in Patagonia. It is now that I realize that it's not only the Glaciers and the ice fields but also the people stories, their survival instincts in the cold that connect these two lands.

When the European missionaries found the Yamana tribe here on the South Chilean fjords in Patagonia, they were covered in seal fat to protect them from the cold. The animal skin was used to make shelter and everything from the animal was made use of.

I haven’t heard anything of the Inuits from Greenland, which still are sizeable in numbers both in Canada and in Greenland. What the temperatures did in the north, the winds do in the south. Human’s do not really conquer nature, they never can. They learned to co-exist.

I don’t even want to talk about what we are doing today with nature.

A walk in Patagonia in summer

On my 6^th day in Patagonia on this expedition cruise I learn more about this land and its past. The more I do the more I feel blessed to have visited both Greenland and Patagonia in the span of less than 3 months.