Stella Australis 2

Having cruised overnight, we awoke with the ship in one of the Chilean fjords. The morning had a choice of walks following disembarkation.  We had chosen to do the more strenuous of the two (as the basic walk appeared to a stroll along the beach). 

 We were taken by Zodiac boat to a small bay and set down on on the shore there.  The walk involved a climb up a slope to a couple of viewpoints and then a circle round to come back down to the beach - after last week's efforts it was not particularly hard. 

 The beach and the slope were, in fact, all material deposited by the glacier that had filled the valley in the past.  Over the last 100 years the ice has retreated some 14km.  One can now see two tongues of the glacier in the valley above the fjord.  We also, briefly, our first penguins - they dived as soon as the boats got close; and, on our way back to the boat, some seals basking in the sun.

We motored during lunch and the early afternoon reached a group of islands called the Tucker Islets. The afternoon excursion was a boat trip around these bits of rock, which are home to colonies of rock cormorant, Magellan penguins and great cormorants.  There are also predators there - skua and cara-cara.

A lecture on glaciology in Patagonia provided the education element for the evening.

After dinner we watched a screening of a video on the fauna of the area (from the National Geographic channel!).  This meant we avoided the karaoke!