Bernie's Travels: Boat trip from Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt, Chile

From Puerto Natales, almost at the tip of South America, I arranged to take the Navimag cargo/passenger ship north to Puerto Montt. It was a four day trip through the relatively calm fijords in the south of Chile. At this point I was beginning my journey back north, looking to see some of the places that I missed on my way down to the tip of South America. There are no roads that connect the very south of Chile to the middle of Chile without crossing back into Argentina. A flight, bus trip back into Argentina, or a boat through the fijords were the only options for going back north from Puerto Natales. Taking the boat seemed like the coolest option.

To start the journey I bordered with about 50 other passengers about 9:00 at night. After we boarded the crew went about loading the cargo throughout the rest of the night and we were off before sunrise the next morning. When I woke up the next day I was surprised to see 16 truck trailers of cattle sitting on the ship deck right bellow the dinning room/movie theater/dance hall. The shot of the window overlooking the ship deck with the disco lights above says it all. The Navimag was a unique mix of tourism and cargo transportation.

The boat was a great choice although I expected the trip to be more icebergy and glacier-ridden. As it turned out we had four cloudy and sometimes rainy days that obscured any glaciers that there might have been. Still the island peaks surrounding the channels were beautiful even in the fog. And the boat was cool. There wasn't a ton to do but we could roam around and even hang out with the captain and crew in the bridge. The meals were fairly good and there were also movies throughout the day.

The most photogenic scenes on the boat were of the cows hanging out on the deck of the boat so they got extra attention.

All in all it was a relaxing ride lots of naps reading and movies over the four days. In the evening we brought out the good stuff and had a lot of fun playing poker with a mix of chips consisting of sugar packets, coins, dominoes and ripped strips of a brochuer. The last night we played bingo and I ended up winning a bottle of wine. Bingo!

We arrived in Puerto Montt before sunrise on the last day. After breakfast and some time on the deck we disembarqued and we were all off in different directions. I started to hitch-hike north towards Santiago.