Chile is well-known for its observatories. The dry and clear conditions present at its high altitude landscapes make it a perfect spot for locating huge telescopes with less of the atmosphere to peer through at the distant reaches of the universe. My wife and I are at the nerdier end of the interests spectrum and we also like seeing things or taking those sorts of trips that fall within the less usual category so that we have something unique to talk about, and on a cruise we really like to mix up the types of things we see too. It’s not that we like being the centre of attention – perish the thought! – but we also don’t like being considered dull and unoriginal when boring the hell out of friends and family when we get back. Plus, the more distinct you make your trips the easier it is to remember them and not have them all merge into one big pile of spaghetti holidays.

So, we hit five islands on this cruise. Do you want to know what we did?
I suppose I’d better get it over with, yeah.
On the first island we went to a beautiful, golden beach.
Nice. The second?
We went to a beautiful, golden beach.
Right.
On the third island we went to a beautiful, golden beach.
I see.
The fourth island was where we found something absolutely magical.
Do tell!
A beautiful, golden beach.
Oh God.
The last island was the one with the volcano and the castle on its rim.
At least that sounds fascinating.
Probably, but we spent the day on a beautiful, golden beach.

We didn’t see any beautiful, golden beaches along Coquimbo or on the way to and through La Serena as we drove to our excursion destination but the amount and variety of wildlife was instantly noticeable and remarked upon by our guide. This tiny clip (temporarily removed) shot from the bus on the exit from the port at Coquimbo shows just some of the wildlife in the region with red-headed vultures on the railings above a sea lion that we’d been told had come ashore in recent weeks and begun making itself at home along the promenade.

The drive to the observatory was a long one and while it remained dry and dusty it also got brighter and clearer as the bus got closer to our destination. We’d started the day under low cloud, a common occurrence in any place that gets hot during the day, cools down at night, and is close to water – this explains why I’m not a morning person too – but we knew from experience of visiting Chile a few years earlier that visits to altitude took care of that problem. The landscape was one of not much vegetation and plenty of shades of beige but compared to our long bus ride through part of Patagonia in Argentina in 2016 it was still actually interesting, no doubt because it wasn’t unending flatness to the horizon. The hills we passed by and the smaller mountains we could see were part of the Andes range which probably helped bestow upon them a level of wonder that possibly doesn’t come across in this short bit of footage (temporarily removed).

Short of the town of Vicuña our bus turned off the Route 41 road it had been following and headed south. The road started to climb and snake as it followed several watercourses that run like veins through the scrub landscape. At one point we came alongside a large dam which had trapped the water in an artificial lake; mist rose from it as the sun rising over the mountain ranges heated up the cool surface, and the whole effect was enchanting. You’ll have to take my word for it, though, because the sun was directly behind it and both throwing its energy at our windows directly and reflected off the lake. I knew it would be a waste of time and precious battery power to even think about taking a photo.

A little while later we came to the bottom of the main road leading to the various observatories in this part of the Chilean mountainscape. Vehicles aren’t permitted up this road without a guide and he hadn’t arrived yet so we were able to get out and stretch our legs. In the first of the photos below you should be able to see the domes of the observatories on the distant mountain top.

Our guide duly arrived and we were off once more on a slow, winding ascent. On several occasions we had to stop completely for our driver to get out and manhandle a boulder out of the way before we could continue. Our guide, meanwhile, told us a little more about the science setup in Chile, how international companies and governments would effectively pay to have their observatories built and maintain the infrastructure, and how they would grant Chilean scientists time on the telescopes in return.

We also got an explanation as to the flora in the region as we started to pass cacti as we meandered upwards, some quite plain, others with white flowers, and many with bright red flowers. “Do you see the three types of cactus here? Which one do you prefer? The red one? Ah, interesting. It is pretty, no? The birds think so too as that is the one they are attracted to most. They land, they feed, they carry spores. Yes, spores, because the red flower is a parasite and it is spreading everywhere.” Like most people, I’ve always wanted to be in a sci-fi/horror movie about a group of people heading to a remote outpost while a parasitic lifeform spreads across the landscape towards them and this was the closest I’ve got to that dream yet.

Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory

And so we finally reached the top and our excursion destination, the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. We were 2207 metres above sea level with breathtaking views across the Chilean mountains and landscape and a crystal clear, blue sky from horizon to horizon. Main construction on the site lasted from 1963 to 1974 although some of the smaller buildings and facilities dotted across and just below the small plateau were added later. The most prominent structure was the housing for the largest of the telescopes on the site, the 4-metre aperture Víctor M. Blanco Telescope, which is primarily used to survey the sky for evidence of dark energy.

The Small and Medium Research Telescope System (SMARTS) consortium manage the telescopes at Cerro Tololo under 2 metres in diameter and it was to the largest of those, the equatorial-mounted, 1.5 metre Cassegrain reflector that we first went. Through a doorway and up a narrow, steep set of steps took us into the dome of the telescope where we were invited to look around for a few minutes and ascend another small set of steps onto a walkway that ran around the interior of the rim of the dome and surrounded the telescope mount.

We gathered around as our guide talked about the sorts of things that the telescope was used for, which we’d been expecting, but then we were asked to move away from the exterior wall of the dome and come closer to the railings. There was some copper piping around the interior of the dome that I’d already bumped into twice because a) the walkway was fairly narrow and there were quite a few people milling around on it, picking random directions in which to walk, and b) I’m a clumsy bugger when I’m gawping at interesting things. I initially thought that they were sensitive and that maybe we (more accurately, I) had triggered some alarm but this wasn’t the case at all. Instead, we were treated to what I can best describe as a science rollercoaster ride. The floor mount was raised, the doors were closed and reopened, the dome was rotated, the telescope alignment was adjusted, and it was immense fun. I know that you’re probably thinking “Mark, that doesn’t sound like the most fun, to be perfectly honest” but let this video (temporarily removed) show you the error of your ways.

See! As I’ve mentioned on plenty of occasions, we’re experiential travellers and I’d like to think that we’re in a very small subset of people who’ve had that sort of experience.

Once the floor mount had been lowered and a safety gate unlocked we were then led down and out of the 1.5 metre telescope dome, across the top of the site, and into the larger observatory building. First stop was either the control room or a flatscreen monitor showroom on the ground floor where we received some information about the sort of work that took place here.

I don’t like to get in the way of other people when we’re on excursions, preferring instead to have them in my way so I can bitch and moan about it later, so we stood at the back of the room. This gave us sole viewing of the observatory emergency equipment positioned there, equipment we can relate to and which meets with our full approval.

It was then time to see the 4-metre telescope in this building which required an ascent of eight floors. Luckily, that was by elevator but with the elevator only holding about eight people at a time there was a wait for several groups to go up and the empty cars to return. Beside the elevator was a box containing keys for all the doors in the building and an attractive piece of artwork on the wall.

The keys were used to ensure that all doors between the telescope housing and the ground floor were locked at night when the telescope was in use. When it comes to taking sensitive readings every effort is made to reduce any interference and that includes air pressure changes that can happen when a door is opened so the building is empty when in use and everything is controlled remotely.

There was something of a TARDIS quality inside the dome of the Víctor M. Blanco Telescope. From outside it had appeared big, yes, but not massively so against the vista of Chile around it. Once we’d entered the ground floor, both the control room and the elevator were tight squeezes for our excursion group. But in the dome itself it was like walking into a vast cavern, the experience multiplied by the echoing nature of the space and by the cool temperature, necessary for the telescope’s operation. We had been advised that warm layers might be necessary for this visit to the telescope and there were clearly some people who felt the chill enough to wrap up. We found it quite pleasant but we are fans of the cold anyway.

Unlike at the smaller telescope, the doors were kept fully closed during our visit. We were told that not only was this dome not opened during the day but that special care had to be taken when the moon was in the sky as the brightness of our planet’s natural satellite would damage the sensitive camera equipment.

This short video (temporarily removed) has some footage from both outside and inside the 4-metre telescope at Cerro Tololo.

We made our way outside in one of the first groups to use the elevator this time so that we would have more time to gaze across the landscape from our high elevation once more while we waited for everyone else to emerge. The sky was fantastically blue, the buildings blisteringly white, and the mountains disappearing into the distance exuded a sense of deep age that felt like the perfect setting for equipment peering into the history of universe. Other observatories on nearby mountain tops could be seen from our position.

We stuck to the shadows of the buildings as much as possible, not because it was particularly hot – it was actually really nice, temperature-wise, and the naturally dry heat meant it wasn’t uncomfortable at all – but because we knew from previous experience just how much more potent the sun’s rays were with a thinner layer of atmosphere above protecting us.

Lunch In Vicuña

That marked the end of our fascinating trip to the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory so we reboarded our bus and headed back down the twisting, dusty road that had brought us up here. It wasn’t a whole lot faster heading down than it had been going up but at least all the boulders had already been cleared away this time.

As this was a full day’s cruise excursion there was an included meal and this took place in the town of Vicuña. We had a short drive through some of the streets initially so that a few points of interest could be pointed out. I won’t pretend to be a fan of poetry but the apparently famous Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral was born in the town in 1889 and we passed by a square named in her honour; the town has a museum dedicated to the poet too.

Our lunch was huge. Far too much to finish, in fact, and not helped by a bread thing that might actually have been drier than the landscape we’d found ourselves in for the day. It was all very nice, though, and was accompanied by water, Chilean wine, and pisco sour, something for which this region of the world is famous. We do like to drink national drinks in their nations but this wasn’t a sentiment shared by some fellow cruisers with whom we shared a table in the restaurant. We did very well for pisco sours during this meal.

Star Princess, Coquimbo

All that remained was for us to return to Coquimbo, passing through La Serena once more, and get back on Star Princess.

Eagle-eyed and regular readers of this site might have noticed that the quantity of photos accompanying what was a spectacular trip is quite clearly lower than normal for me, Sir Photosalot. Very regular readers of this site will know the reason for that. As explained in the previous post covering the start of this cruise, our luggage hadn’t accompanied us to Chile. Importantly, because of a luggage-packing technique that has subsequently been consigned to an oubliette and covered over with concrete, my camera battery charger was therefore missing and I’d engaged in photo rationing despite my wife’s sensible reminders that we’d be able to buy a new camera in a worst case scenario so I may as well treat everything as normal. I couldn’t, though. I’m a cautious bugger by nature.

As our bus arrived at Coquimbo port we saw that there was a cage of suitcases on the dockside. We guessed that this was other luggage that had been delayed and could clearly see that our cases… were not amongst them. However, in a mad moment of positivity I mentioned to my wife that they might have had a second delivery of cases while we’d been off engaging the science portions of our brains because it probably depended on where people had flown in from as to when things got sent onwards. And I was right. As we stepped into the corridor aboard the ship we could see our cases sitting outside our room. Please picture two grown adults skipping and dancing and making silent whooping noises so as not to disturb anyone or draw attention to themselves as they make their way to their cabin here.

The sense of relief – only tempered fractionally by realising I should have listened to my wife (motto for life) and gone mad with the camera as usual – is almost impossible to describe. I know we’re not the only people in the world to have had luggage go missing so if you’ve ever been in the same situation then you’ll know the weight that lifts when it turns up.

After unpacking and while waiting for my wife to go through the shower ahead of my turn I headed out onto the balcony to take some shots of the city and record a little bit of video on my super-cheap video (temporarily removed) camera of the band entertaining the ship at dockside.

The skyline of Coquimbo was dominated by the Cruz del Tercer Milenio (Third Millenium Cross), an 83-metre tall monument with 2000 steps leading to it (prayers are more effective if you’re out of breath, sweating, and cursing between gasps). In addition, we’d also seen a lot of street art in the area as our bus had passed through twice during the day so Coquimbo and neighbouring La Serena are probably places that we could find things to interest us and explore more if we returned to this part of the world.

Wheelhouse Bar Menu

Where our first day had been stressful thanks to flight problems and lost luggage, our second day of this cruise was one filled with fabulous sights and utter joy. Still full from our massive lunch earlier we had a later dinner than even we typically go for and this gave us time to check out the Wheelhouse Bar for the first time where we discovered that, just like Crooners, it had received a new drinks menu too. We had one drink in there and another in Crooners before dinner then had a relatively early night for us again as we’d been up fairly early for the trip to the observatory.

We would have two sea days back-to-back next, giving us plenty of time to fully unwind, properly align our body clocks with the new timezone, and appreciate all the ship had to offer. That’s not exactly a euphemism for “check out all the bars” but there’s certainly some overlap.

In March 2019 we took a cruise aboard Star Princess, a ship we’d previously cruised on from Argentina to Chile three years earlier (see: South America: 2016) and on which we’d had, without a shadow of a doubt, the best service and friendliest staff of any of our many trips. It had also been a stunning holiday in terms of things we saw and experienced, checking off such things as visiting the southern hemisphere for the first time, cruising around Cape Horn, seeing whales and dolphins, and ascending a volcano. With news that the ship was being sold to P&O Australia in the next few years we decided to take another trip on her before she left the fleet and were pleased to find an itinerary that would start more-or-less at the same place we’d disembarked previously (and exactly three years to the day) then finish at Los Angeles, allowing us to tick off a few new countries and experience crossing the equator on a ship at the same time.

Flight Issues

If we’re not cruising out of the UK on a Princess ship then we use their EZAir service. It has one drawback in that the flight options tend to be understandably limited to the blocks they reserve but otherwise we’ve found the prices are excellent and the comfort that comes from knowing that in the event of problems Princess will sort things out and get you where you need to be is worth it. Our flight out to Chile using the Spanish airline Iberia would take us from Heathrow to Madrid and from Madrid to Santiago after three hours in the Spanish capital. With our first flight taking place at 17:10 we planned to leave the house at midday as that would give us plenty of time to drive up, park, shuttle across, dump the luggage, pass through security, and get in some pre-cruise drinks (as is the law).

We’d completed the online check-in the day before, picked our seats, and were spending the morning of the start of our South and Central American adventure watching some TV and waiting for it to get to the right sort of time to leave the house when I got a text message from Iberia. Our flight from Heathrow had been changed to 19:35. As our flight from Madrid was still the same, our layover time in Spain was now down to just 30 minutes. That seemed awfully short, especially for people who don’t run through airports. We reasoned that the connection would have to be possible since Iberia wouldn’t have altered it this way if it couldn’t but we didn’t really believe it. We decided to travel up to Heathrow as we’d planned where we hoped we’d get a chance to see if there was any way to get another flight across to Spain earlier.

Here’s where EZAir kicked in. We’d not long got in the car and started driving before I got a call from Princess. They’d been notified of the flight change too and wanted to make sure we were aware of it. They then asked if we wanted to get an earlier flight and offered us one of two options. The first of those would have been tight to make but the second was a flight at 18:45. That would give us over an hour in Madrid and was far more acceptable. So we accepted. Our stress dissipated.

We parked the car, took the shuttle to the airport, then found the Iberia desk where we explained that we’d been booked on the 17:10 flight, it had been changed to the 19:35 flight, then had been changed to the 18:45 flight while we’d been in transit to the airport. The airline desk man was very friendly, very understanding, and very unable to find our details until he’d called over a colleague. Quite some time later he eventually said he’d got it all sorted, tagged our luggage to send it on its way into the bowels of the airport, and handed us our boarding passes. Phew! Ish.

We got to Madrid with no problem and found the lounge by the next gate we needed, relaxing a little more. Our flight gate opened and we joined the queue to board. I handed over my pass and waited. And waited. My wife and I were pulled to one side while the rest of the plane’s passengers boarded. After several minutes watching the desk clerk typing all manner of weird codes into her console she turned around and explained that it looked like our bookings had been cancelled in London and not fully rebooked for the ongoing flight but, she assured us, there were plenty of seats on the plane so she just needed to reallocate some seats for us and we could get on. She handed us new passes then looked at us with an apologetic smile. “Your cases,” she said. “I think they have still been routed to the plane. But maybe not. I cannot find them in the system.”

We’ll gloss over the security implications of not being able to track luggage properly and we’ll gloss over the IT implications of being able to issue passes that get us through security but not onto a plane. We shrugged. Maybe the luggage would travel with us and maybe it wouldn’t. There wasn’t a lot we could do other than try not to worry about it. Of course, we worried about it through the entire eleven and a half hours-long flight.

Luggage Issues

And at Santiago airport in Chile our fears were fully realised as the luggage carousel ground to a halt with no sign of our bags. We weren’t the only people in the same boat and I’d got talking to a Scottish guy who’d also been originally booked on the 17:10 flight from London but had flown to Madrid on the later flight. He’d not expected to find his bags as he’d needed to jog to get to the departure gate on time and had been the last person to board the plane.

What do you do if your luggage doesn’t arrive at the airport when you do? We found an Iberia desk and talked to the man behind it. My new Scottish friend spoke fluent Spanish so breezed through the process of explaining his situation and filling in all the necessary paperwork. He offered to translate for us but we thanked him, said we didn’t want to hold him up, and explained we’d muddle through. And muddle through we did.

The main thing you need is your luggage receipt sticker (affixed to the boarding pass), a description of the luggage (easy to show as our hand luggage was just a smaller version of it), and an address to which to send the luggage onto. Ah. Have you ever tried to tell someone with limited understanding of your own language that your address for most of the rest of the day would be on the coast, tomorrow it would be a hundred kilometres to the north, and two days after that it would be another country? In fact, if you’re on a cruise and your luggage doesn’t turn up then you don’t actually need the address; all you need is to get the incident number from the airline desk because the cruise line will sort things out for you from there. We finally got through that we had no address to give but that someone would be in touch, got a printout of our lost luggage incident form with its tracking number, and headed out of luggage collection and into the main airport in search of Princess representatives and our transfer to the port.

Princess Representative: Do you have any bags to put on the bus?
Me: They may or may not be joining us at a later date.
Princess Representative: Oh no! Have you talked to the airline? Who did you fly with?
Me: Yes, we have. It was Iberia.
Princess Representative: Oh, that explains it.

A few hours later and we were on Star Princess in the port of San Antonio, Chile. First order of business was straight to reception where we handed over our lost luggage incident print-out, gave a description of the cases once more, and left everything in the hands of Princess to sort out. Before we headed to our room to drop off our hand luggage we were given complimentary toilet bags, offered the loan of a formal outfit, and were told that until our luggage turned up we could get complimentary use of the laundry service with a priority next-day turnaround on any clothing left out the night before. You can’t argue with that.

The emergency toiletry kit was basic but perfectly adequate.

Hand Luggage

If there’s one good thing that has come out of having luggage lost on a flight it is in realising that our packing technique until this point has been very risky. In fact, prior to this particular cruise, when we’d flown we’d done so with barely any carry-on luggage at all; my allocation is always my camera equipment and my wife’s hand luggage has had a few, random things in it. This was the first cruise where I suggested it might be sensible to have a change of clothing in the hand luggage so in addition to reading material and some shoes we actually had some underwear, a dress, a pair of trousers, and a couple of t-shirts for the first time. This meant that with the free laundry service we would be okay clothing-wise around the ship although we’d be decidedly more casual than smart casual for the non-formal evenings.

Where I fouled up was in packing my camera charger in the main luggage. I quickly realised that if our luggage didn’t arrive I would be limited to taking just one battery’s worth of photos unless I could find a supplier of new batteries and/or a compatible charger I could use, or consider buying a new camera onboard. One battery is about 700 photos and for me that’s horrifyingly restrictive. There were, therefore, no photos taken on the ship on the first day other than those snapped on my phone; I had to ration my picture-taking in case the worst happened.

We have subsequently vowed to pack suitably in the hand luggage and to distribute mine and my wife’s clothing between the cases when we travel from now on.

Crooners On Star Princess

How do you deal with stressful situations? You do yoga or meditate if you’re into that sort of thing. We don’t because we aren’t. We’re like the late Alan Rickman in Galaxy Quest; we see if there’s a pub. Our preferred venue for drinking on a Grand-class Princess ship is Crooners. We saw that there had been an obvious refit on the ship since our previous cruise on Star Princess, the seating upholstery looking very nice indeed. We also noticed brand new drinks menus.

The menu was an improvement in many respects from its predecessor but while there were some welcome additions for us to try for the first time there were also some notable omissions; my favourite drink, the Lawford’s Libation, was nowhere to be seen any longer. Still, there was stress to deal with so we had a drink. Or two. Maybe three. And some nibbles.

Vines

A year earlier we’d discovered that we really liked the Vines wine bar on Sapphire Princess as a late afternoon location to unwind and keep an eye on activities in the piazza. Our cruise prior to this one had been on Diamond Princess and for understandable reasons given its demographic there was no Vines present. Star Princess did have a Vines bar, though, so we checked it out to see if it was likely to be as good as our Sapphire experience. It would turn out to be better thanks to two outstanding bar staff here who, after this first day when I showed my cruise card to them to buy some wine, never needed to see my card again and remembered our names and what we most likely wanted to drink every time they saw us afterwards. That’s top class service. They also kept trying different persuasion techniques to get us to try the complimentary tapas or sushi available in the early evening for wine-drinkers.

We were in Vines when Star Princess departed San Antonio and headed north to our first port stop at Coquimbo. From our seat by the window we watched the pilot boat alongside us.

First Dinner On Star Princess

It wouldn’t be a late night for us on this first day aboard the ship. I don’t sleep on planes and anxiety about lost luggage could only fight off general tiredness and the power of alcohol for so long. Not long after we had dinner we decided to head to bed but dinner itself was very good indeed. In the three courses below my wife’s choice is on the left in each case.

As mentioned, the following morning would see us in Coquimbo, still in Chile, and our time there, including our excellent excursion to visit an observatory on a mountain will be covered in the next post. And our lost luggage? Maybe that will make an appearance too.

We’d showered, changed, the ship had started moving away from Puerto Montt, and we were killing a little bit of time before we were planning to head off to a quiz. My wife was reading her Kindle and I was contemplating whether to take a few last pictures during the sailaway when I suddenly became aware that the ship had stopped. Heading out onto the balcony I saw a very unexpected sight, rushed back, and persuaded my wife to put her reading material down and join me. She harumphed, sighed, stepped out, opened her mouth, ran back into the room, and returned with her phone to take some pictures too of the surprise awaiting us on the starboard side of the cruise ship: a Chilean Navy submarine was entering the port as we were leaving and we’d obviously had to stop to let it through the relatively narrow passage.

Seeing a submarine at sea was just another in a great series of memories from a fabulous cruise on the Princess Cruises ship Star Princess. A wonderfully-coloured sunset then started to appear in the sky as we completed our departure from the Chilean port so we headed off to the aft of the ship to take a few photos and another bit of video on my phone before making our way to the quiz.

We ignored the lure of the German drinking establishments we could see and took a brief look in the local shops but ended up not really finding anything we wanted to buy.

We then headed down to the shoreline and took some photos of the area and across Lake Llanquihué where the volcanoes Osorno and Calbuco could be seen.

We saw quite a few dogs in Puerto Varas. Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina had all had their fair share of dogs on the streets. It must be a very South American thing.

An inquisitive bird among the rocks caught my attention for a while too.

Heading back into the main square of the town close to the time we were due to be picked up by our coach we passed a few statues of local heroes of some sort or another; another common theme in the South American cities we’d visited on the cruise.

We sought out some shade for a while in the main square and bumped into a couple we’d talked to on a few occasions. It was here that they remarked excitedly they had seen me on the TV screens in the main theatre as my dance with a Uruguayan tango dancer had made the cut on the DVD of the cruise. Great.

Following the road around the southern shore of Lake Llanquihué we headed for the Club Aleman restaurant where we were due to have some lunch.

Now, before we’d ascended the volcano our guide had mentioned that we were going to eat at that particular restaurant next and that the food would be vegetable soup, grilled salmon (farmed salmon being one of Chile’s main exports), and blueberry pie. I’m not a fan of blueberries. My wife really didn’t like salmon and wasn’t too keen on the idea of vegetable soup either. But here’s the thing: these were dishes being prepared by locals in the country we were visiting and our attitude is always to try it, to see what it’s like, to respect where you are. Needless to say but the reason I’m mentioning this is that this was not a sentiment shared by some of our fellow passengers.

I don’t eat salmon!

I only eat Alaskan Salmon!

Nobody mentioned we wouldn’t be able to choose our own meals!

Yes, about half a dozen decided that the food wasn’t for them so the guide said he’d phone ahead while we were at the volcano and try to get an alternative. And he did. And so it was that some people had an alternative chicken meal prepared especially for them.

We arrived at the restaurant set in vibrant green surroundings under that clear blue sky we’d been accompanied by since mid-morning. After a brief nose around the exterior where the most interesting thing was the collection of hanging pots with flowering plants in them hanging from the trees we went inside for our meal.

We were seated with two other couples, both American, one of whom we’d had dinner with one evening and had talked with a few times before during the BOGO hours on board the Star Princess; white, elderly, southern twang, pleasant enough right up until someone mentions politics, race, or religion when you grit your teeth and try to change subject; very typical for the American cruiser demographic we meet. The other couple were fresh faces to us but it turned out that they were two of the half dozen who wouldn’t touch salmon.

We ate and drank. The vegetable soup was lovely; my wife even remarked on it. The Chilean wine was gorgeous, as we’d expected. The salmon was absolutely perfect. It was so good that my wife wolfed hers down and has since started buying salmon and cooking it herself now that she knows how good it can be. The blueberry pie exceeded expectations. The pisco sour was excellent. We loved everything prepared for us at Club Aleman Molino De Agua by the shores of Lake Llanquihué.

The two fussy eaters… no. The wife picked at the chicken that had been cooked especially for her then left it. She might have finished her soup. I don’t think she finished her pie. She mentioned she wasn’t a fan of pisco sour. If that had been the end of it that would have been fine except we all left tips; the unspoken agreement was $5 per couple would say thank you and cover the frantic deliveries of the meals to forty people around tables by the friendly staff. Except the fussy couple made a big show about deliberately leaving $2.50 because one of them didn’t like her food. There was nothing wrong with it and there was nothing wrong with the service but she’d decided she wasn’t going to eat it and therefore the staff should suffer. Some people are just scum.

We had a bit of time after that to pop outside and stretch our legs plus take in some of the views of Lake Llanquihué. A road separated the restaurant from the water which wasn’t busy but when cars came around the nearby bend they were doing some speed. It’s a good thing only some of us younger, more mobile people on the excursion risked crossing to get some better photos.

We arrived at the highest point that vehicles are permitted to get to where there was a car park, a souvenir shop, a café, and a chairlift station. When the snow is around it serves as a popular station for skiers. We’d been told by our guide that we had enough time so that if anyone wanted to they could buy a chairlift ticket and take that up one section (there were three I think) before coming down. Naturally, we went straight to the ticket hut and I used some horrible Spanish on the guy there to buy what we needed. Also naturally, we were in the minority. On our coach of forty people I would say that perhaps six of us went for the ride while the others headed straight for the café. Bear in mind that our next stop would be for a meal at a restaurant. I will never understand people who pay to head off around the world and pay for an excursion only to skip out on interesting, unique things you can then do there.

It was so quiet. It was incredibly serene being on a chairlift riding up the side of a volcano with nothing but blue sky above able to look down on volcanic rock and even clouds, and with views across to neighbouring volcanoes in the region (one of which – Calbuco – had erupted just the year before).

At the first chairlift stop we got off and had a walk aroud the flattened area of the station to take in the lovely views of Osorno towering above us. We couldn’t see the first station we’d alighted at as it was beyond and below a dip on the volcano’s side. A number of pathways were also visible with people on them; you didn’t have to take the chairlift if you fancied the walk but we didn’t have the time for that and, hell, why would you?

Advice from our guide on this excursion was to slap on the highest strength sunscreen on account of the far thinner atmosphere and subsequently far stronger sunlight reaching us. We duly covered ourselves in Factor 50 but even though the time we spent on the mountainside was under an hour we still managed to get burnt, most notably on my wife’s calves that she’d not completely covered and which were exposed to the sun behind us as we descended back to the base station.

On our return to the base station we still had time to pick up some souvenirs before getting back on the coach. Our guide had also mentioned before we’d arrived that the station did a fantastic local chocolate drink with alcohol in it at the café that had sounded very appealing. Upon asking the passengers if they’d tried it he was met with a chorus of negativity and an announcement from everyone that they’d had coffee. He looked disappointed. We weren’t surprised.

We didn’t get to see the crater at Osorno which was a shame as we’ve still not seen an active volcano with lava but that still leaves something on the bucket list. We did get to ride a chairlift up above the cloud level, though, and that’s not bad. A very enjoyable trip.

Our arrival at this part of Chile had been to low, grey cloud and poor visibility and with our day’s planned activities to include a trip up a volcano we were initially disappointed. However, as our guide pointed out, it was early in the day and the sun had not yet had time to burn off the cloud that had come down from the mountains and the mist that had come up off the sea and lakes in the area. He was proven right as just minutes before our arrival at the waterfalls the conditions seemed to completely change and blue sky lit the area.

The waterfalls are not your “thundering down the edge of a cliff”-type of natural feature but are, instead, described as “chute-type” which makes them far lower-lying. Nevertheless, they and the river were very pretty, with striking blue colours. With some sheer cliff edges around the area of the river and its falls we were in deep shade for a lot of the time at this viewpoint which allowed some of the cool mist to still be present just above the water. It also made light metering for photographs a bit tricky.

Probably more impressive than the waterfalls were the views of the relatively nearby volcano, Osorno, which was to be our next stop. Against the clear blue sky the volcano looked incredibly impressive.

We’d been told by our guide when we left the coach that because of the limited time at the tourist stop we should walk directly to the waterfalls and view of the volcano, then we’d have a better idea for how long it would take us to get back and so we could visit the souvenir shop and take in the landscape without being too rushed. As it was we had plenty of time looking at the Petrohué Waterfalls and Osorno Volcano so could saunter back at some leisure; we didn’t find anything at the souvenir shop here with much of it appearing mass-produced which doesn’t really appeal to us.

At times as we cruised along the fjords we would see distant mountains lit by the sunshine and we caught glimpses of other glaciers too. Waterfalls were a common sight as well and although they appeared small this was probably quite illusory on account of our distance from the rock faces down which they poured.

When the low clouds did make a reappearance they flowed softly around the tops of the very craggy rock faces we were cruising past and were fascinating to look at.

It would have been nice to see the glacier under clearer skies but this wasn’t to be with us instead experiencing the shipboard view of the impressive work of nature under low grey clouds and persistent drizzle. This made for very challenging photo conditions; my telephoto lens in particular struggled with light range and colour balance, persistently adding far too much purple into the shot that had to be removed almost completely in post-processing.

We’d made our way onto the promenade deck rather than seeing what could be seen from our balcony simply because we didn’t know which side of the ship would have the best view. As it was it didn’t really matter as the Star Princess moved into position alongside the glacier then proceeded to rotate on the spot with its thrusters several times ensuring that no matter where anyone was on the ship they would get a decent view.

The Amalia Glacier was the second glacier we’d seen, that first one being the Kjenndal Glacier in Norway. As with the fjords we think that the Norwegian experience was more impressive due to proximity but we’re still incredibly glad we got to see this Chilean glacier and surrounding landscapes too as just how many people can say they’ve seen one, let alone two in different hemispheres of the planet? With the worsening impact from climate change seeing this glacier before it retreated completely out of view from a vessel like the Star Princess was also something worth doing.

The conditions may have been calmer but the general weather was dull and overcast with occasional rain. The overall effect was to drain the colour from the surroundings which was a shame although pretty atmospheric.

As we got deeper into the channels the surrouding rock faces loomed larger and there was more low-lying cloud rolling between the peaks. The geology of the rocks was quite nice to look at but in terms of fjords the ones in Chile cannot compare to Norway’s offerings (or Alaska’s from what we’ve heard).

Most of the photos of the Chilean fjords were taken from our balcony as the cruise along them coincided with a period where there was nothing of interest to us taking place on the ship. We’d been informed over the tannoy when we were expected to arrive at the glacier so knew that we could get an afternoon quiz in just before then. We took advantage of this fortuitous timing to take a walk around the promenade just prior to this in order to get some fjord photos from a different perspective.