Thursday February 20th, 2025 Amalia Glacier, Chile
- Neil Wylie
- Dec 22, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 6
We spent yesterday cruising north through more of the beautiful Chilean fjords, with the mainland off the starboard side to the east and a long string of islands off the port side to the west, the sea was relatively calm. Around 8:30PM the islands to the west ended and we became exposed to the winds off the Pacific Ocean; things aboard ship were very interesting as we hit 6M swells and 60 knot winds – we were at dinner and everything was sliding around, at one point an unused wheelchair took off and crashed into the flambe cart. Luckily the flambe cart was undamaged.
This morning we have slowly cruised east through the fjords, we are heading for the Amalia Glacier. It’s interesting to watch the skirmishes breaking out in the Commodore Club as people try to “save seats” for their apparently imaginary friends who never seem to turn up.
Around 11:00AM this morning Queen Victoria made her approaches to the Amalia Glacier; the steep sides of the fjord began to close in, and we could see the huge mass of ice dead ahead. Slowly, slowly the captain inched the ship forward – a small guard boat had been launched and circled around looking for any potential problems as I’m sure the depth under the keel was becoming shallow. The sky was overcast but threatening, the temperatures were cool at around 50F, there was no rain – I think we were very lucky with the weather. The sea in the sheltered fjord was very calm.
We could see a huge ice field on the upper reaches of the glacier and a large rock mass in the center separated the two main ice flows which were like immense white lava flows that had been suddenly frozen. A two mile wide wall of ice terminated the glacier at the shores of the fjord, it was shot through with boulders that had been picked up as the ice flowed down hill, giving the wall a dirty appearance. It was hard to gauge the height of the ice wall, but I’d estimate it at about 100 feet. I was hoping to see a piece of the wall shear off and plunge into the water, but no luck. Having viewed the glacier from the upper open decks and the forward area of deck 5, not normally open to passengers, we decided to return to our cabin as the captain had announced that the ship would be turning through a full 360 degrees before heading back out of the fjord. As the ship slowly turned, we were treated to amazing views of the glacier right from our balcony.
With a bit of time to spare because we skipped a port, the captain announced that we’d be making an unscheduled stop at an additional glacier – the El Brujo in the next fjord just north of the Amelia Glacier.
It took about 2 hours for the ship to make its way around to El Brujo and at around 2:30PM the captain began the slow inching forward of the ship. El Brujo had a single massive ice flow, unlike Amalia – the ice also had more of a blue tinge, really quite beautiful. Examining with my binoculars, and taking some zoomed in photos, the ice revealed itself to be composed of vertically folded sheets – it reminded me of the tripe I’d see in the butcher’s shop when I was a child. There is a strange quietness when in the presence of these huge chunks of ice, somehow the sound is deadened – and people seem talk in whispers. The guard boat poked around at the base of the wall and once again I was struck by the scale of the things. Small pieces of ice floated around the ship and at one point I spotted something swimming on the water, I thought it might be an otter, but I could not get a good look at it as it teased me with only brief appearances. The ship completed a 360 degree turn then headed back up the fjord and, on the way out, I spotted a beautiful waterfall teeming down the side of the cliff.
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