Day 2 - At Sea

We assemble on the Zodiac deck and jump in making certain to clean our shoes in an antibacterial solution that protects us from contaminating the fragile islands we’ll be visiting. We are headed to Ainsworth Bay. The land is wild, some trees stripped bare of foliage or permanently bent by the wind. The mountains remind me of views Cyn and I had seen on Navimag and in Puerto Montt: sharp and green up to their caps of snow. But here we are surrounded by water, the islands are nothing more than peaks that have managed not to be submerged. The summits and valleys and sea, the clouds in the sky — all of it makes one stunning panorama in the brilliant sunlight. All seems peaceful in the land where there is no God or law, but I am told this can change at any moment.

My Zodiac group was taking the so-called “hard hike.” (Australis provided three simultaneous excursions nearly every day: Easy, Medium and Hard.) It was a smart crowd. Out of the 11 people joining me, five were doctors, but, you know, not one was an orthopedic surgeon in case someone took a fall. (Which DID happen. No one was hurt.)

Paula and Rodrigo were our guides and the Zodiac bounced us across the sound to a pebble strewn, marshy beach that resembled great rivers of spinach sitting beneath high mountains. The path led us through rocky terrain into thick bunches of red-berried bushes that seemed to hang everywhere. The moment we began the hike, Paula said if anyone planned to eat the berries, be careful. One was called a diddly dee, deep red and quite tasty, perfectly edible. But said Paula, watch out for a tasty kind of strawberry she called Devils Berry. "That causes diarrhea." There was silence as we walked until one climber called out, “So if you had both berries together, you would end up with diddly squat.“

Upward to a Beaver dam, and a broad pond draped in red reeds and leaves, maybe halfway into the hike. The beavers had done their work. Even if you think they might, beavers don’t come by Tierra del Fuego naturally. According to Paula, Argentina brought Canadian beavers in thinking that they would deliver excellent pelts. But even this close to the South Pole, the winter’s aren’t cold enough for the beaver to develop the thick oils and pelts they do in North America. And without those - no value. So the grand idea was a bust and now the beavers are mostly mowing down miles of Tierra del Fuegan trees because beavers must gnaw on wood to keep their famous teeth under control. It was a growing problem without a simple solution.

Beavers aren’t the only invaders of the region (besides the Spanish, British, Croatians, Germans and tourist like us). Grayfox were brought in by the British in the early 1900s, making life a little harder for the red foxes that are natural.

Eight hundred vertical feet brought us above Ainsworth Bay and the Tucker Islets. At dawn our captain said we had sailed up Seno Almirantazzo (Admiralty Sound) beneath the gaze of Karukinka National Park’s snowy peaks. Before that we had crossed the Magellan Straits and passed through another labyrinth of channels — the southern extreme of Patagonia.

We were now standing in one of the remotest parts of planet earth. Only 120,000 souls populate all of Chilean Patagonia, but the landmass is vast making it one of the least populated places on earth. In Tierra del Fuego, where we now stand, people were even more scarce.

I thought about that, and loved the idea of being in the middle of nowhere (not counting my fellow hikers). The walk gave us a spectacular view of the bay, the Marinelli Glacier and the Darwin mountains, and I was suitably stunned. It had been a fine morning, but the day was still young. In time we all scrambled back down the mountain and zodiaced off to the Ventus. It looked like a toy against those mountains, but soon enough it would be circling us around the other side of the Darwin mountains.