A lazy start but we aim to do a couple of miles around deck nine first. Meanwhile we’re watching the staff set up the ‘sail in’ party because ‘sail away’ will be during dinner so not a good idea. Anyway sail in requires gallons of hot chocolate and a whole bar’s worth of liquors to go wit it. I manage two with Amaretto!
Before long we’re anchored in the fjord alongside HAL’s Zaandam and close by to Castro, a new port to us. We’re on the first tender across and are soon walking up an exceedingly steep road into this hill-top town, past the main square and back down the other side before embarking on our chosen waking route for the day.
We’re halfway up the road to the next town when midday strikes, and (for whatever reason) the air-raid alarm sounds. Now this may not be a throwback to WWII, it may be related to a more recent threat that all of Chile has to consider - tsunami - we’ve seen the signs everywhere indicating the routes that are designated should such a threat be identified. Anyway today’s signal is no threat, instead we hear across the valley all the many dogs barking at once, just like a scene from 101 Dalmatians calling across ‘Wuffolk.’
We purchase the necessary items for a cheese and ham or salami sandwich for later, and move onwards. If you’ve noticed, I have joined the Jack Duckwork School of Amature Spectacle Repairers recently, and today my fix is proving rather challenging, so much so that I accidentally pack one of the bottle of water we’ve bought rather badly, and as we walk if empties itself in the rucksack all over my jumper, our waterproofs and various other items. For the rest of the day the back of my shorts have in incontinent look about them.
Continuing our walk, we head off into the hills on our pre-planned route, which is a lovely escape form the madness of the local town, until we find a nice square adjacent to a church for our lunch. It’s not too long before all the local dogs are sat in front of us begging for tit-bits from our lunch, but we’re not that easily conned! We have to keep our legs crossed to form a cordon around the food until we’ve eaten our fill, and then we gave them what was left of the salami - friends for life now!
We completed our walk but returning to the town, checking out the all-wood San Francisco cathederal, which was lovely, and enjoying for a short while the bustle of the town, before aiming for the long-route back to the harbour. As we’re going we decide to bolt on another treck and head off to a small hill splitting the fjord and set off around it, intriguingly called the Ten-Ten Peninsular. We didn’t find any reason for this, the lovely flat walk around the shoreline soon became a climb up the hill. The contour lines on Google Earth suggested we’d need to climb about 40m, but I learned rather late that the contours were actually 100ft not 10m so by the end we’d climbed considerably more, all good for the waistline.
Although we’d not recommend a holiday on this island, it is an excellent cruise stop, very beautiful scenery and the stilt-houses around the water’s edge are, in the main, very pretty and certainly characterful. The town is not so nice but fine for an hour. The entire area seems to undergoing a rennaisance with house building everywhere, many of which are cabaña, so it’s obviously very popular with locals.
Eventually back onboard, we have time for a shortened jacuzzi and Singapore Sling (or two) before dressing for dinner. Tonight we’re dining with two of the explorations team, it’s an interesting meal learning about the amazing lives these scientists and explorers all lead, and how they get all over the world for their particular interests.
There’s a special show on tonight, specifically because Tim Rice is on-board, he has arranged a second musical review punctuated by him talking through the various scenes. Once again it is a very busy show-lounge and we are all lucky to have had the opportunity to be here.
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