Planes, ferries and camper vans

After the typically terrifying flight (I need more diazepam I think!) to Auckland I arrived at a typically drab urban hostel, which was a bit of a shock to the system after La Casa Roja. I arranged to hook up with the three girls for a drink later that day and I trawled around Auckland’s electronic shops in search of somewhere to turn my laptop in. I dropped it off and headed back to the centre of town to meet the girls, but we were all insanely jet-lagged and only managed a couple of beers each before crashing at about 8pm.

Somewhere over the south Pacific we managed to lose the 15th December. It never actually happened for me - I left Chile on the evening of the 14th December, flew for 13 hours and landed in Auckland on the morning of 16th December. I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable date line-related explanation, but it makes my head hurt. Joyously I managed also to lose my camera in the hostel in Chile. Hence the lack of pics in the last post. Bugger.

I didn’t actually have any plans for Christmas and there were now only about 10 days to go, but Suzy, Carly and Frances kindly asked me to join them in Queenstown. They’d booked themselves into a hostel for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day so I was more than happy to tag along for the ride, but it was going to be a real mission to get down there in time.

The next morning, when we felt a bit more compus mentus, we all got together and decided that we’d hire a couple of camper vans to get us down to Queenstown in time for Christmas. There was a bit of toing and froing about which company we would use and we eventually settled on a company called Spaceships - essentially converted people carriers, painted bright orange and named after sci-fi characters, mine was called Dune so I was happy. (And strangely obsessed with her five days further down the line!)

We were due to head off on 20th December, so I had a couple of days to kill in Auckland. Not the most attractive or interesting of towns, but certainly not unpleasant. And an old friend and colleague from Emap called Luana who had just returned home to Auckland and she took me on a wild night out around some of the city’s brighter night spots.

She introduced me to her big, gay Samoan friend Trevor and we managed to fit in some Karoake, a couple of night clubs, helping the bin men at first light and also a swim in Mission Bay in our pants as the sun came up. Bedlam as Luana put it, but so much fun.

When I’d recovered we hit the road in our Spaceship with the prospect of 1,600km to cover in four days. It was always going to be a stretch, but we set off in good spirits - with a fellow waif and stray called Mark in tow.

I managed to drive a grand total of one hour before I was pulled over for speeding. Apparently doing 120km/h in a 100km/h zone is not cricket in this part of the world. Oops.

Still, he was a very nice man. Not nice enough to let me off my ticket, but it‘s the first speeding ticket I‘ve ever had so I wasn‘t too despondet. And where better to get one than in a country where the fine is only NZ$100, there won‘t be any points on my licence and I can skip the country if they come after me. It’s all good.

After three or four hours solid driving we were struggling to see the appeal of New Zealand as to me it looked pretty much like England.

We did notice some steam rising up from over some hills so headed towards them in the hope of seeing some of the fabled hot springs. We found hot springs, but not quite in the natural form we’d been hoping for!

Still we hit the supermarket, stocked up on beans and booze and settled down for our first night in a layby beside Highway 1. Not particularly salubrious, but the girls serenaded me with renditions of various pop songs from the 1980s. For two hours. Thanks girls!

The following morning we decided to head for the source of the roaring sound we’d been able to hear from our layby and quickly found New Zealand‘s largest waterfall, the Haku. Very impressive, and we headed up stream for a quick dip in some real hot springs before hitting the road again for Wellington. It was my first genuine “travelling in New Zealand” experience and was a real thrill.

It wasn’t a hot spring as I’d imagined it in my head. It was more the edge of a river with a hot waterfall flowing into it, which created some very weird sensations - the water at the top of the river was very hot indeed and then three inches below it was freezing. It was actually very enjoyable once you got used to it, kind of like being in a sauna while someone runs ice cubes over your back and arms.

We stopped for some lunch by the edge of Lake Taupo and watched some locals taking the “Hole in One Challenge”, essentially a platform moored a hundred yards or so offshore with a golf pin on it. Only in New Zealand.

The push down to Wellington wasn’t so much fun and after we’d dropped Mark off in a hostel in the centre of Wellington it was well and truly dark before we found another suitable layby. We polished off a couple of bottles of wine in about 20 minutes, watched half an hour of a DVD and then passed out on our camp beds.

We had a stupid o’clock start to get back to Wellington to catch the 8 o’clock ferry, but I seem to be getting the hang of these kind of starts so we made it on board with time to spare and promptly fell asleep until we arrived in Picton at the north end of the South Island.
The South Island is undeniably more beautiful than the North, but I will have to go back to the North as we raced through it so quickly and I’d really like to see Raglan, Coramandel and Northland.

After stopping for lunch in Blenheim we headed down through New Zealand wine country and, weirdly, given the same thing had happened to me on the last road trip I’d been on in Californian wine country, we began to run out of petrol. After a tense 40 minutes we rolled in neutral into a tiny town and filled up just as the vans were on their last legs. Unlike in the US running out of petrol out here would have been a much longer wait before someone came along. Out here it’s a surprise when you see another car on the road rather than when you come across an empty stretch.

A few hours later we hit the west coast of the island and had a lovely drive along the coast road, at one point crossing a single lane bridge that was shared with some railway tracks, which was a tad nerve-wracking.

Just as the sun was setting we managed to find our first campsite and just collapsed onto the chairs and had some Heinz sausages and beans. Proper camping food (plus I’d been bunged up for the last three days and was getting worried!).

The site was based on the edge of a lake so when we’d broken camp we went for a swim in the freezing black water. The girls are planning on a sky dive, but if their performance on the edge of the lake was anything to go by they won’t make it out of the plane!

By now we’d got into a bit of a routine and the prospect of a five-hour drive wasn’t actually that daunting. The scenery is so incredible that it’s impossible to feel tired. If anything the issue is staying focussed on the road as incredible view after incredible view rolls past the windscreen and your attention wanders, rather than staying awake.

Photographs can never do the experience of driving through this landscape justice, and for large parts of the time you’re lost in your own thoughts, listening to the music and taking in the views. In any other country doing the kinds of mileages we were doing would have been deathly dull, but here it is a genuine pleasure. Fortunately my van partner Frances is wonderful and kept us going with a selection of tunes from the iPod, and when we were bored of that reading exerts from Chicken Soup For The Soul.

We did actually buy ourselves a The Greatest Christmas Album In The World Ever to get us in the Christmas spirit, but after hearing Band Aid for the fourteenth time in three days it began to wear a bit thin and we went back for some more Chicken Soup.

After our dunk in the lake we headed for the Franz Josef glacier.

In comparison to the Perito Merino in Argentina and some of the monsters I saw in southern Tierra del Fuego it was a tiddler, but the girls hadn’t seen one before so they went up in a helicopter to view it from the air. You can tell these girls are from the north east - they walked bare-foot on the top of the glacier. I didn’t go with them, but they did bring me back a snowball, which was sweet.

The next stop was a sandfly-blown outpost called Pleasant Flats about two hours north of Wanaka in the New Zealand Lake District (I always thought our Lake District was world class, but Chile and New Zealand have us beaten hands down).

The drive from Franz Josef to Wanaka was, again, awesome. We realised we were running out of superlatives to describe what we were seeing and tried to make some up, but stupeful and amazome are no more adequate than their legitimate roots. Every corner presented a new vista that took your breath away, like this:

In Wanaka we stopped for some grub and a swim in the glacier-fuelled lake (yes, it was cold, but were English and hard)

before the final push to Queenstown up over the highest road in New Zealand (1,000m).

And, finally, after 1,620km, four days, one speeding ticket and fourteen listening to Fairy Tale Of New York we arrived at the hostel at 5.00pm on Christmas Eve.

Mission accomplished, and a huge adventure had. A proper road trip in one of the most beautiful places in the world. I would recommend it to everyone if you ever get the chance.

Normal service will be resumed shortly

Merry Christmas one and all!

Yes, I know. I’m sorry. But it wasn’t my fault, honest. I blame the Jewish raspberry. Or rather the young man from Israel who was on crutches in my hostel in Puerto Varas.

I think the last time I managed to post to my blog was when I was in El Calafate seeing the glacier - blimey, that seems a long time ago. I’m sure you all enjoyed the wonderful photography and witty commentary, and I was actually really enjoying doing it. But then said raspberry interrupted my flow.

Before I get to that though, I need to bring you all up to speed with what happened post-glacier. After Perito Merino I made my way down to Puerto Natales with a few new-found friends to catch a ferry called the Navimag (dubbed the Navishag among a certain class of traveller - not me obviously).

The Navimag is a real ferry in the mould of the cross-Channel ferries of our youth - all vinyl floors, terrible food and grumpy staff. But the attraction for me was that it would get me from Chilean Patagonia up to the Chilean Lake District without the requirement of another flipping bus. As comfortable as the buses in Argentina are, I could not face another 50 hours of films in Spanish, Bingo and the smell of other people’s feet and it was a great chance to see Patagonia from the sea in, rather from the land out as I’d been doing before.

When young Albert, Simone and I got to Puerto Natales it was blowing a gale - so much so that the boat couldn’t actually dock. Simone’s booking had fallen through so she decided to head down to my favourite place in all Patagonia, Ushuaia, instead and me and the intrepid Albert headed for the ship.

It’s so weird this travelling thing, how often people reappear in your life when you think you’re never going to see them again. One of the hard things about this lifestyle is saying goodbye to people you’re just making a connection with, but for reasons of circumstance cannot stay in touch with.

On my buus journey down from Puerto Madryn to Rio Gallegos, on the east coast of Argentinian Patagonia a young English guy called James sat down next to me on the bus. We shared a few travellers tips, chewed the breeze, and then he got off and went his own way. A nice guy who I’m sure I’d have become friends with if we’d had more than 10 hours together. Shit happens, on to the next place.

But then who was sat in the check-in room of the Navishag a month or so later? James, of course.

He, Albert, myself and half a dozen other “young” independent travellers all fell quickly in together, including an Aussie guy called Rob who I’d sat next to at dinner two months before in Buenos Aires and not seen since. It truly is the gringo trail in this part of the world.
Anyway, the Navimag was a bit of a let down in terms of scenery and luxury after the cruise around Cape Horn. But that’s not to belittle it - it was a working ferry that happened to go through the Chilean fjords and the company had rightly identified that there was a market among travellers for a bit of sight-seeing. But there were no excursions to speak of, except Puerto Eden, which, in the early morning light was very picturesque.

The rest of the time on the Navimag was spent playing the eternal traveller/student favourite game Shithead, drinking cheap wine, and playing Truth or Dare. For me, the Navimag was actually more about the people - Sinead, Ciara, Kim, Rhona, James, Albert, Rob, Ruben, Charlotte, Nicci and Gerrit. Lovely people one and all. We had a wonderful time and it was one of those rare times when you’re on the road when you can actually make real friends.

We arrived in the Chilean port of Puerto Montt at some ungodly hour and James and I headed half an hour up the road to a town called Puerto Varas and met up with another girl from the Navimag called Amy. Despite my crippling hangover from the last night party on the ship we decided the best cure would be a white-water rafting expedition.

It was actually great fun and far more involved than the last time I’d done it down the Rogue River in Oregon. Well, I paddled this time, so that was progress. But we also stopped to leap into the river off rocks on the way and even swam over one set of rapids. I wish I’d had my camera as the river was dominated by the local volcano and the scenery was typically stunning.

Puerto Varas is a truly lovely place, despite the heavily evidenced Germanic influences - we had sausages, mash and sauerkraut for dinner one evening - and it is somewhere I would love to return to. The landscape is distinctly European in terms of the gentle rolling hills, trees and temperate climate, but the whole place is dominated by a chain of volcanoes that remind you thoroughly that you’re no longer in Kansas. Wonderful.

The only blot on the Chilean landscape was the raspberry who decided that the best place to drip dry his swimming shorts was on a step directly above the place on the floor where I’d decided to recharge my laptop. You can imagine the effect on both the laptop and my temper.

I knew that at some point my little laptop would come a cropper, but it really pissed me off that it had happened in such a stupid and unthinking way. I was not happy. But as someone once said, it’s not what happens, it’s how you deal with it that defines you. So, of course, I went into a day-long sulk. Very mature.

I was genuinely pissed off though, not only because I’d lost the laptop, but because it meant I had to use public internet and that just doesn’t work for the blog. Believe it or not uploading the pics and typing all this drivel out actually takes a long time. Three, four or five hours sometimes. Not that I begrudge it, I actually enjoy it, but if I’m going to do it I want to do it properly. And this dickhead’s stupid behaviour had deprived me of what is effectively my diary as well as a means of communicating with you guys.

Nevermind, it’s done now.

After Puerto Varas, I headed up to Santiago to a hostel called La Casa Roja. And it is no exaggeration to say that it puts any number of four and five star hotels I’ve stayed at to shame. OK, I was sleeping in a dorm, but the architecture of the building, the Jacuzzi, pool bar and, bizarrely, cricket net meant I never wanted to leave the place.

I spent a couple of half days with Ruben and James pottering around Santiago, but spent the rest of the time relaxing by the pool, meeting new people and playing some cricket.
The cricket net was just weird. Apparently it is the only “official” one in the country and the Chilean national cricket team practice there. You couldn’t make this shit up.

Santiago is a lovely place, but the smog and the hostel meant that I didn‘t venture out as much perhaps as I should have done. And after a couple of months in south America, I was tired and ready to move on. New places and people to see and meet.

On my last night in Santiago I met a bunch of Geordie lasses who were going to be on the same flight to Auckland with me.

Sorry for the lack of pics in this entry, but all will become clear…

Not suitable for vegetarians

No one wants to see this first thing in the morning, but there it was when I opened the fridge in the hostel I was in in Puerto Natales. Six thirty in the morning, a six-hour bus ride ahead of me and I'm greeted by a decapitated lamb's corpse. Nice.

I was heading to a place called El Calafate, which is back in Argentina and so required another interminable set of border crossings and passport stamps. I've got a good few now, but they're all Argentina and Chile!

El Calafate is famous for only one thing and that's as the base for exploring the Perito Moreno glacier. It's a bit of a one horse town and feels like its set on the moon rather than Argentina.


It has its pretty bits.

But the rest of it is pretty standard Patagonian fare - rubble roads, sparse half-built houses and plenty of plastic bags.


Like everyone else here though I was off to look at the glacier. Four kilometres across, 70 metres high at its face and travelling at a speed of between two and three metres a day - even though I knew all these numbers and looked at it from the boat as we approached it, it didn't really sink in just how big it actually is.

It's not until you get close to it that you realise what an absolutely enormous slab of ice this glacier is.

As impressive as it was to look at from the lake, the point of my trip was not just to stare up at it. I wanted to climb it, and fortunately so did a dozen other people, and even more fortuitously a company had some guides who would take us. What a stroke of luck.

I have to admit though, up close it seemed like it was going to be a tough couple of hours.

Oh well, best crack on. I put some crampons on

and the guides set off hacking a path up the ice for us.

Two slighter women you couldn't find, Julia and Paula were tiny, but they smashed up the ice a treat and we were on our way.

We passed the odd crevasse, and this one was about 10 feet deep, but the guides reassured us that on a glacier like Perito Moreno they don't just open up underneath you, they take months to get even this big.

The blue colour is because the ice below the surface is so densely packed that it has a different refractive index (can't remember if that's the right phrase, but it traps light differently to ordinary snow and ice), and this what gives the whole glacier its blue hue.

After a couple of hours clambering over the ice, and thoroughly enjoying ourselves, it was back down to the edge for the ubiquitous scotch on the glacial rocks.

And a spot of lunch overlooking where we'd just been. It's not a bad spot really.

As we were waiting for the boat to come and collect us I was taking some pics of the face of the glacier when a huge lump fell off it. I just managed to catch the last bit going in, which was in itself the size of a car.

The ice "calf", as they're called, was so big it sent a huge wave rippling across the lake.

It was an exciting conclusion to another exhilerating day.

I think I may begin to suffer amazement fatigue soon. I need some bland grey London drabness to ground me again!

Round the Horn

I finally checked out of the hostel after 10 days and headed, slightly nervously, down to the quay to board the cruise ship. I’d walked Nicci down to the same spot a few days earlier before she boarded her boat to the Antarctic not understanding why she was saying she was nervous. Now I could, I don’t know why I was on edge, perhaps it was just that fear of the unknown which seems to accompany me every time I move on from somewhere.

The ship Mare Australis is a very pleasant Chilean cruise liner with space for about 180 passengers. Small but seemingly perfectly formed. As our guide Fransisco said, “This is an expedition ship, so there are no casinos or jauzzis here.” Having said that, after 10 days in a bunk bed in a dorm for six sharing a bathroom, my cabin was positively palatial.

We left the quay past a knackered old steam driven Argentinian navy submarine and Ushuaia faded behind us as the sun set and we headed into the Beagle Channel and Chilean waters.

It was a bit weird to find that my every waking minute has been scheduled out for me after so many weeks of going where I wanted when I wanted, but the three-course meal, unlimited wine and free bar in the evening took the edge off.

I was put on a table with a bunch of English speakers - an eclectic bunch, but thoroughly good company for the next few days. They were, from left to right: Paul and Janet, formerly of Nottingham but now the Seychelles; Russell and Brooke, the New York neurologist/property attorney mother-daughter team; Hilary and Stuart from Romsey; and Pauline and Jerzy, two finer examples of Australian good-heartedness you could not find.

Early to bed though as we had to be at 6am for a 7am “disembarkation” on to Cape Horn island. Francisco, our guide, had done such a thorough job of managing our expectations of being able to land that I went to bed nervous I would only get to see the famous cape and not set foot on it. For a good couple of hours I was unable to sleep, despite the gorgeous bed, lying there imagining what it would be like, whether it would fulfil my expectations, and of course whether we’d be able to land.

After only a couple of hours fitful sleep I woke up and joined the other passengers for the “early risers coffee” at 6am. (First trekking, now early risers’ coffee, I know, I’m shocked too!). It was a chilly grey morning, but as far as I could tell the water was pretty calm and I was standing with fingers crossed as we waited for the captain’s decision on a landing.

Fortunately it was good news and we donned waterproofs, life jackets and scrambled excitedly to the stern of the ship to get into the Zodiacs which dropped us off at the base of a cliff on a ‘beach’ which was only about 20 feet wide.

Cape Horn island is actually pretty uninteresting. There is a memorial to dead mariners atop one promontory, a lighthouse on another, a chapel, and a few wooden boxes housing Chilean marines who are de-mining the area in between - I’m not sure who put the mines there or when, but it strikes me as an absurd waste of time and kind of sums up man’s stupidity when it comes to territorial disputes.

We pottered about the island for an hour or so and I took as many pictures as I could trying to capture an image which perfectly encapsulated Cape Horn. After a while though I stopped hiding behind the camera and just sat staring out to sea having a moment. Even in the calm conditions we were experiencing it was a menacing place. Overall though it was more that I was able to stand atop that hill and look south at Antarctica that was what was important about the place, more than pictures of what was effectively a fairly uninteresting scrub-covered hill.

Back on board and tucking into my first hot breakfast, in fact the first breakfast to consist of more than a bread roll and jam, for five weeks, the Captain announced over the tannoy that because conditions were so good we were going to actually go around the Horn. Apparently they are only able to do this half a dozen times a year because the conditions around the Cape are often so poor - we were the lucky ones we were told.

As delicious as my scrambled eggs and bacon were I was buggered if I was going to miss this. Myself and most of the men in the room, the women on the whole seem curiously unimpressed by the whole Cape Horn mythology, ran to the viewing deck as the enormous cliff of the Horn hove into view. Maybe the girls weren’t raised on stories of pirates, shipwrecks and derring do, but I was and I was loving it!

They raised their special "Rounding the Cape" flag, sounded the horn and served up tots of rum, lemon juice and boiling water as we officially went south of the Cape. What a feeling.

There was no real sensation to it of course, but to know I was on a boat that was actually rounding Cape Horn was fantastic. Going to the island was great, but this was magnificent. And there was the Cape, not half a mile away.

That mythical place I‘d read so much about as a child, where thousands of sailors had died in freezing waters and howling gales. The cold wind, the roll of the ship, the sense of history, the mourning of so many dead, the smiles on the faces of passengers and crew, and the massive cliff of the Cape staring down at us. What a sensation, absolutely magnificent.

And to prove it, here's a pic of the GPS track!

Once the cape was moving out of sight it was back below deck to watch a documentary about Shackleton and the Endurance. More nautical adventures and British-based brilliance! There are a couple of other British people on board, but I wonder how many of the innumerable French, German, Dutch, Spanish and Argentinian people knew anything about his amazing journey. They certainly did by the end of it though and there were definite sobs from around the room as two-hours later Shackleton returned from South Georgia to find all his men still alive on Elephant Island.

There are so many references to the British in this part of the world - Shackleton, Fitzroy, Darwin, it brings out a strange kind of national pride. Completely misplaced of course as my gentle chug around the same waters bears absolutely no resemblance to what they and so many others must have endured down here, but at least now I have a sense of place to go with their stories and can put into context their achievements.

This is one little boy reading pirate books under his covers who is very happy!

There’s no time to waste on this adventure cruising lark though. Cape Horn, Shackleton, a three-course lunch, a quick nap and another disembarkation on to Isla Navarra at Waiula, the spiritual home of the Yamana indians. There’s actually only one ‘pure blood’ indian left and Chile is doing its best to preserve this island. I'm not sure if this is actually the last indian's house, but just in case, here it is.

The agenda for this afternoon is a trek up 1,500 metres to a viewpoint overlooking the island and the surrounding sounds and islands. So off we popped like a line of school kids, I'm surprised they didn't ask us to hold hands.

I did see some interesting flora, for those of you interested in green shit. Apparently the yellow balls are sap, not fungus and they are poisonous to insects. When the seasons changes they turn black and drop off and look like little bits of burnt bread which the indians eat. Rather them than me.

The weather wasn’t great so the views were a little disappointing, but we did stop off halfway up to try and spot some beavers. I was a bit sceptical as the last time I’d been to a beaver lake in Ushuaia the guide had said they are nocturnal and this was the middle of the day. The guide lined us all up on a log and all 20 of us sat there in silence staring at a muddy pool. To be honest I felt a bit of a dick. After about fifteen minutes of nothing, this popped up its head from under the water. Oh me of little faith.

We humped back down the mountain to the zodiacs and were greeted by a member of the crew handing out Jonny Walker served on glacial ice. If only all travelling were like this!

The evening was another four-course meal, but this evening it was followed by a bingo game in the Sky Lounge. I’ve heard rumours that bingo is making a comeback in London as the game of choice for hen dos, but I can attest to the fact that it’s alive and well in south America. They love it here. I think this is my third or fourth game since I got here, the others were on buses. And you’re not allowed to watch the movies on the bus until they’ve finished the bingo.

Anyway, I won the prize for being the worst bingo player on the ship - a Cape Horn cap. Well, I think it’s cool seeing as I've actually BEEN ROUND CAPE HORN.

After all this mountain climbing, trekking and excitement, I treated myself to a lie-in on the morning of the third day. Not because I particularly needed the sleep, but the chance to lie in bed, read, and do my own thing without half a dozen other people spoiling my ‘Me time’ was too good to miss. I missed my fried breakfast, but I did finish the Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in blissful peace and quiet as the glorious cliffs of Tierra del Fuego drifted past my window.

By the time I emerged, the temperature had taken a distinct drop as we entered the ice zone.

We dropped anchor and sped off in the Zodiacs to have a look at a couple of glaciers.

As we entered the area where the glaciers met the water, the sun came out and we were able to see the glorious blue of the ice. The water is a curious milky turquoise around here, which is a result of the minerals in the rocks being absorbed by the glacier and then deposited in the sea. Glacial milk, it’s called apparently.

It was wonderfully peaceful, once the f***ing French had shut up, and the guides switched off the outboards so we could just drift at the foot of the glacier listening to it creak, crack and groan. The noise is surreal, it’s very loud and reverberated around the valley we were in like gunfire. It really puts you in mind of the immense pressures building up in the ice. At one point there was such a crack and upheaval of the ice that one woman took cover in the bottom of the boat, thinking the whole wall of ice was going to fall into the lake and she was about to be swamped by a mini-tsunami. Very cool place.

We headed bck to the ship which headed deeper down the channel to see this behemoth, whichh is named after a famous German called Gunther Pluschow. Sadly, he does sound a bit of a hero

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunther_Pl%C3%BCschow

That evening there was an auction for the chart plotting the route round the Horn. I did bid and Paul from our table kindly offered to contribute when I told him about the chart I had on my wall at home. But a very old Belgian guy wanted it too much, so I just missed out.

However, the next day Paul arranged for me to buy a chart and the pilot of the ship marked up our route on a little map so I can put the route on myself. Not quite the same, but pretty bloody close! Dad, the map and route are on their way in the post.

To be honest, this trip was all about Cape Horn, the glaciers were impressive, but after the Horn I lost interest a bit and wanted to be on my way. The people, food, wine and scenery were wonderful and I thoroughly enjoyed my time on the ship, but I had places to go and people to meet.