On the morning of December 26th, we rose early and headed down to Puerto Montt. The flight to Punta Arenas, a town on the southern tip of the continent and on the Straights of Magellan, lasts a little over two hours. If you ever get the chance to fly to Punta Arenas, make sure you reserve a seat on the left side of the plane as you fly south (and a seat on the right side of the plane as you fly north). This is important because if there is a break in the clouds, you will experience views of the Andes that are otherworldly.
We were very lucky on our flight down to have clear weather. Every time we looked out the window, we were blown away by the mountains, the volcanoes, and the Gulf of Ancud which is immense. We saw the grand island of Chiloé. We saw ships pulling into the port town of Aisén. And then we saw what the Chileans refer to as the Campo de Hielo – Field of Ice. (There are actually 2 of them – a Northern branch and a Southern branch.) Glaciers and white and mountain peaks and fjords and more glaciers. Your eye starts to follow a glacier and the thought comes to you “Wow, that is big!” and then a minute passes and you realize what you were just looking at was in fact just one arm of the main glacier and then the thought comes to you “Holy Smokes! Jiminy Crickets! This glacier is enormous!”
The first picture in the upper left is of a volcano
and the other five are of glaciers in the Campos de Hielo.
1 comment:
Ay caramba! Cool that you got the aerials. More often than not those flights are over thick clouds.
Post a Comment