Scenic Cruising

“You think they’d have coffee up here,” complained my neighbour to her husband.

We were sitting at the bar in Skywalkers. This round bar/nightclub has 360 degree windows and at Deck 17, sits up above nearly everything at the stern of the ship, giving a virtually unobstructed view all around.

Hans and I had come here to watch the magnificent unfolding panorama of Southern Patagonia from the comfort of armchairs and heat. Outside, I saw my first glimpse of snow.

The hills on either side of the channel are rocky and rugged, mostly granite and magma left over from ancient times when glaciers crept over the landscape at their, well, glacial pace. Today we can still see the Amalia Glacier, a river of ice flowing down three channels from the Southern Patagonia icefield and meeting in a fat, 200’ thick wedge of blue ice at the water’s edge.

The rounded hills are dark shadows, ranging from deep charcoal closest to the ship and become ever fainter until the last ones vanish into the mist. Here and there the hills are curiously flat topped as though sheared off by a giant knife but it turns out they’re only capped by low clouds.

To accommodate the higher paying balcony passengers, the captain pivoted the ship until both the port and starboard side got a good look at Amalia. We lowly peasants from the inside cabins got the best views because we were forced to leave our cabins in order to see anything at all. Hence, the prime viewing spot at Skywalkers.