Chilean Coast - Mon Feb 19 to Fri Feb 23

We boarded the Seven Seas Voyager on Monday afternoon in the port of San Antonio after a two hour bus ride from Santiago. The ship is beautiful and the staff are very welcoming, knowledgeable and efficient. The first stop was at Puerto Montt on Wednesday so we started with a day and two nights at sea, exploring the ship and enjoying a formal night on the Tuesday evening.

At  Puerto Montt we had an excursion to several sights around Lake Llanquihue, including Mt Osorno, an “inactive” volcano that last erupted in 1869 and now has a ski resort on it. Osorno and its snow cap are beautiful from a distance, but up close there is a lot of volcanic grit that blows around like a sand storm!

Our visit to Puerto Chacabuco was canceled due to weather and so our next stop was anchoring close to Laguna San Rafael which is a lagoon formed from the receding San Rafael Glacier. A 200 seat catamaran took us from our ship into the lagoon and to within 500m of the glacier. We did not witness a calving, but there were many small icebergs floating around us. Glacier ice is a wonderful blue due to years of compression removing all oxygen from the ice.

And here is a video showing the glacier and its surroundings with ice debris everywhere.