25th of January - here we are
Ice around the ship, woke up by the sound of the bow thrusters. As you can see it is a rainy day, hope it improves so that the visibility gets better. Talk to you soon, have to get my gear sorted.
Yesterday we left Punta Arenas. We had all been set to go for quite some time, and there was that little excitement in the air that you experience when leaving port. It was not all happiness though; we were very sad to leave the local Greenpeace team of Punta Arenas, a bunch of wonderful people that made our stay a nice experience.
Dolphins came and played around the bow as we sailed. I tried to take a couple of pictures of them to post for you, but all I got was some UFO like appearance in blurry waves.
We are now going through the Magellan Strait, which Cecilia has written a bit more about here below. Tomorrow we arrive to the glacier HPS 31. We are not really sure what to expect: will it be easy to reach? What will the weather be like? Will it have changed a lot since Jorge Quinteros was here 50 years ago?
I might be camping on the glacier for a couple of days, will back and tell you all about it. Hope this gets posted, sending updates via email from here on, and have no idea of what it looks like from your end.
--- Posted by Iréne
The Magellan Strait
Punta Arenas is the heart of the Magellan Strait. Looking from the sky, the Strait looks like a stretched and snaked where bays, fiords and coves are born. The Strait is about 600 kilometres long and its waters are a mixture of two oceans, the Pacific and the Atlantic. In a golden misfortune of winds and storms, in October 1520, Portuguese seafarer Hernando de Magellanes was the first European to sail the Strait. Later on, historians would call it Magellan Strait in his honour.
The city of Punta Arenas is the principal port of the Strait and main gate to Antarctic waters and ices. On board of Greenpeace ship ‘Arctic Sunrise’ we started to sail yesterday evening. The southern sunset was a spectacle of shapes and colours while we were leaving the port. It’s now summer time, where the nights grow longer with an ineffable dusk until midnight. The sea was calm, the wind soft and we couldn’t avoid being fascinated by the company of three dolphins who were playing and swimming fast under the bow.
This is how we started our trip to the Patagonia glaciers region. Chile has 75% of South America glaciers. The majority of them are retreating. This phenomenon is a consequence of global warming and rains decreasing. Our purpose during this trip will be to document the retreat of the Patagonian glaciers. We are now sailing to the north channels and fiords.
Twenty thousand years ago this region was covered by ice. Nowadays, the principal vestiges are the great South Patagonian Ice-Fields. The zone, without considering the Antarctica, represents the main reserve of fresh water of South America and it is characterized by a unique beauty throughout its 13,000 km2. The retrocession of ice during the last glacier era drew the Magellan Strait geographically, excavating the base and creating all the system of valleys, fiords and channels which identify the region. An irregular topography characterized by mountains covered with snow and ice mass that often fall directly into the sea.
This is the last part of our tour, and maybe the most important one. We are sailing towards the Fiord Peel to find the glacier HPS 31.
---Posted by Cecilia
Posted by at January 25, 2004 08:40 AMWe spent almost a year camping all over the South American Continent in our VW camper. The area you describe was and is breath-taking and I will never forget the austere beauty of the glaciers.
May you have a successful trip and may the leaders of the world be touched enough to truly care about the wonderful planet. Thankyou for all your work and the guts to get out and do what I wish I would've done in my younger days.