If you are tired of cathedrals and museums, this is the trip for you. My partner, Debbie Geremia, and I experienced one of the best-managed Viking cruises we had ever taken.
During the first week of March, we flew into Buenos Aires, Argentina, then caught a connecting flight to Ushuaia at the southern tip of South America, where we boarded our ship, the Polaris.
This wasn’t any ordinary vessel — the 665-foot ship was equipped with Zodiacs, a few larger speed boats and an actual submarine.
The prime objective of this cruise was to explore the beautiful glaciers and spectacular fjords of Patagonia.
In addition, because the weather was favorable, the captain treated us to an unscheduled landing at a lighthouse built on the tip of Cape Horn.
The ship provided everyone with boots and heavy jackets before we disembarked, although we still had to contemplate whether we could make it to the top of the promontory using the exceedingly steep stairs.
Thankfully, we managed the climb and took pictures of ourselves beside Cape Horn’s small chapel and atop the lighthouse.
We made it safely back to the ship in our Zodiacs, feeling a bit exhausted.
I had thought this would be a pleasant vacation spent relaxing and sipping drinks in the bow’s observation room. But that was not to be.
We returned to our Zodiacs the following day and cruised along the shoreline, observing elephant seals and a tundra landscape that had changed little in a thousand years.
This was Patagonia at its best. We continued our exploration of the Garibaldi Fjord, carefully steering clear of the surrounding icebergs until we nearly bumped up against the face of the glaciers.
Our guide offered a wealth of natural history insights, but I wish he had cut it shorter. We were all freezing.
The sixth day of our trip I found particularly fascinating due to my interest in the voyages of Ferdinand Magellan. Early in the cruise, I’d borrowed a book called Straits: Beyond the Myth of Magellan from the ship’s library that detailed the explorer’s famous expedition.
In 1519, the king of Spain had agreed to finance an exploratory trip to the New World, so Magellan set sail from Seville with five ships, hoping to find a westward passage to the Pacific Ocean.
After losing one ship and suffering through severe storms and a mutiny, he did find a strait that allowed his remaining ships to pass through to the Pacific. They continued to the Philippines, where Magellan died during a battle with the natives.
All that research made this day special. In the town of Punta Arenas in Chile, we were given a guided tour of the Nao Victoria Museum that included a full-size replica of the Victoria, the only surviving ship from Magellan’s journey.
Cruise life on board the Polaris was carefully managed. Every morning, you checked the schedule and made note of the day’s activities, appointments and reservations, along with any historical or natural history talks you wished to attend.
The ship itself was high tech. Everything was controlled by computers — no need to operate steering wheels or consult maritime charts like in the Magellan days. Only radar and a joystick were needed to guide the ship.
From Punta Arenas, we bobbed and weaved along the coast, heading toward two of the most spectacular glaciers in the world.
The first was El Brujo Glacier, followed by the Pío XI Glacier, also known as Brüggen Glacier, the largest glacier in all of South America.
We took a speedboat to this second one to get closer, and we were duly rewarded by the sight of massive mounds of ice calving off the glacier and crashing into the sea.
Unfortunately, we were unable to utilize the ship’s submarine because of inclement weather.
At last, after two days of whale watching, we came to our final destination of Santiago. Almost 40% of the Chilean people live in this metropolitan area, surrounded by the vast, high mountains of the Andes.
The city is well-designed, with many parks and recreation areas. In contrast to Los Angeles and other urban areas in the United States, Santiago residents seemed to live predominantly in high-rise apartments. No suburban neighborhoods existed, at least that I saw.
Santiago has nice beaches, but the water is frigid. We spent much of our time there attending films and talks on famous Antarctic explorers.
Ernest Shackleton and Roald Amundsen were especially interesting, and their harrowing tales of survival made me grateful to have all the amenities of a cruise ship at our disposal.
In all, the Viking cruise was a great two-week trip, with lots of educational opportunities, plenty of rest — at least during the second half of our journey — and good exercise.
