Navimag and the San Rafeal Glacier

I think it was the awful karaoke on the first night that brought us together. None of us dared to sing of course, but we all joked that the determined showman--who continued the painful spectale despite various requests to play ´regular´ music --was a cross-cultural phenomenon.

The six of us were an odd group. An exchange student from Austria, the owner of a bakery, a violinist, student from Valparaiso, and well, god only knows what Jorge did for a living, we became fast friends in the close quarters of the Navimag ship on our three-day journey from Puerto Montt, Chile to Puerto Chacabuco and through the narrow San Rafeal Laguna.

The trip was a natural wonder. The laguna, protected by tall mountains and inhabited by birds that seemed to float rather than fly, genuinely made you feel like you were at the end of the earth. The electric blue ice chunks floating all around grew larger until the glacier itself appeared around the bend, shining gloriously in the morning sunlight in the same comfortable position it had occupied for millions of years.

Later that day, as we toasted our Johnnie Walker over the thousand year old ice, I looked around at our eclectic group of friends that I was unlikely to meet again, and thought, experiences like these are what make the headaches of traveling worth it.

For more photos from the San Rafeal Laguna and Navimag trip, click here.