Due South  -

South of the Equator

Val White takes her bike on a  ferry trip
in the southern hemisphere


In Chile, the ferry which plies between Puerto Montt and Puerto Natales,  is the southern equivalent of the Inside Passage trip to Alaska.

This ferry is a link between two major tourist regions of Chile: the milder climate of the lake and volcano region and Patagonian Chile, with the Torres del Paine National Park as its major attraction.

The MV Puerto Eden makes this three and a half day trip twice weekly all year round, barely leaving enough time for the turnaround. We were cycling from Valparaiso on the coast of central Chile to the southernmost town of Punta Arenas and this ferry trip was going to give us a much needed rest as well as save us hundreds of kilometers of cycling a circuitous route through Argentina, there being no road through this part of Chile.

We were scheduled to leave Puerto Montt on Christmas Day, but bad weather further south had delayed the ship’s arrival and our departure.

This ended up being a good thing as we got to participate in an international Christmas dinner with an assortment of people staying at Rosa’s Hostel.

Chief among the organizers of this dinner were my husband Alex who barbecued fresh salmon and the Braun family from Colorado, the father a doctor who had never traveled outside the US previously, and his three children, one of whom was travelling to southern Chile on a scholarship to research the impact of tourism on the far south.

On December 27^th, the boat arrived.  We checked and met our two cabin mates for the next few days – we had booked a four-berth cabin, the few two berth cabins being a bit pricey. Our private shower room for the four of us was down the hall from our cabin. Even with our Canadian dollar, we felt the high season trip prices were good value. Prices during the off-season are very low and are quoted only in pesos – I guess there aren’t a lot of foreigners during those long winter months.

The tide was out when we boarded and the boat was resting on the bottom, so our departure coincided with the tide rising and the ferry floating off. 

Meals were included in the price of the passage with those travelling in cabins eating in one cafeteria and those in the dormitories eating in another on a lower deck, but being served the same food! The dining tone for the rest of the trip was set on the first night as we lined up for watery soup, overcooked meat, potatoes and vegetables, with Jello for dessert. 

We were reminded of our native British Columbia, where the weather can be spectacular or gray and foggy – the latter can make the scenery seem drab, but nonetheless, we were mesmerized by the archipelago of islands surrounding us, seemingly uninhabited rocks laden with greenery and waterfalls.

Like many ferries that traverse isolated areas, our boat did double duty, acting as a highway – there is no road to link the myriad islands, mountains, glaciers and fjords which straddle the Andes mountains in the lower third of Chile. 

We stopped at the only area of habitation, Puerto Eden, to take on some passengers and offload freight.  The freight was pretty much what you would imagine people in a lonely community might want - potatoes, onions, lumber, cardboard boxes, and beer.

The ferry did not go into a dock, but remained in the waterway with engines running to keep it in place, while all sorts of smaller vessels came out from the village and tied up to it while exchanging cargo.

One of the most interesting facets of this trip was that the bridge was open to the passengers during most of the voyage, except for departure, arrival and during some very sticky navigation in some of the narrower passages. This meant that we could follow our progress on the charts, see the weather reports, ask the crew questions and have a very good view of what lay ahead.

Most of the people we met while travelling in Chile were older, taking a break from work, rather than the teenaged backpackers I had expected. Neil, a English computer programmer had been travelling for almost a year, a lot of it cycling; a Tasmanian couple were enjoying that vanishing Australian perk of earned long term leave, and Liz and Brian, our cabin mates from New Zealand, who had also lived in Zambia for part of their lives.

Claudia and Michael, from Victoria, Canada, cyclists and avid birders, were on this trip before moving to Arviat in Nunavut for her new job as a geologist. I think they will be ideally suited to life in the Arctic as they spent hours standing in the rain and mist at the front of the boat, binoculars trained on the albatrosses skimming the ocean surface.