February 28 - Avenue of the Glaciers

After a brief swing by Puerto Williams in the morning to drop off our injured passenger (who, after x-rays, did not break anything thankfully) we headed back down the Beagle Channel towards the Avenue of the Glaciers. This is a stretch of the fjords that is very narrow and has beautiful scenery and glaciers everywhere you look. We intended to cruise in the ship only through the passage, but spontaneously decided to drop the zodiacs for a closer inspection of the Ventisquero Italia Glacier.

I mentioned previously that Chile has changed their laws regarding small ship tourism in this area and in the country in general. Many are disputing these laws, however, Chile is beginning to implement them, even for ships like us that already have itineraries planned that were permitted prior to the new laws. Therefore, we technically are not able to do any zodiac cruises in areas that have not been previously approved by the Chilean Navy. This makes it difficult to take spontaneous zodiac cruises when the weather and animals cooperate. Thankfully, our Chilean Pilots support us and are allowing us to do some things "outside" of what we might be allowed to do if say, the Chilean Navy was watching.

I mention all of this because our spontaneous zodiac cruise this afternoon fell under such an exception made by our Chilean Pilots. However, about one half hour into the cruise, our ship spotted the Chilean Navy and we had to hide out near the glacier behind some rocks (the rocks were actually extremely beautiful). The passengers got a big kick out of this and two of my zodiac passengers told a story of how they were "arrested" in Vietnam for doing the very same thing. There were nine passengers in their zodiac and to get out of the "arrest" they were forced to pay a fine of seven dollars. That is seven dollars total, not per person. They found it quite amusing of a story; I wondered what the Chilean Navy would do. According to the information I was told, the responsibility falls on the ship as a whole, not each individual zodiac in the water. That is good news. I'll keep you all informed of any exciting events as we continue our true adventure expedition through the fjords.