Heather's travel tales 2023: March 14 2023 Skua and El Brujo Glaciers

Skua Glacier ahead

Another day, another glacier – in this case two of the largest. First landing stop was Skua Glacier which has a 3 km face. It is nestled in the Andes in the heart of the Southern Patagonian Ice field. It’s mammoth! We zodiaced to shore and picked our way through sparkling diamonds, shards of ice – Diamond beach Iceland eat your heart out (although many of theirs were bigger).

Rather magical walking to the face of a mighty glacier through misty rain

Dainty pixie cup lichen, Cladonia asahinae, The vegetation was enchanting.

It was a long trudge across wet gravel, old moraine and sand, through light rain, across creeks and on through thick vegetation (sadly there was no botanist on board to describe and appreciate my finds). Quite tranquil, but for the people. They did however stagger the landings spreading them across 1.5hr with a return ‘deadline’ for each landing party so we didn’t create too big a crush in this pristine environment (some people chose not to respect those necessary restrictions - on most trips there are those who think rhey are entitled to do as they please!)

That's Lindsay coming back from his explorations.

I stopped at a great little spot while Lindsay went on for another half km or so. I had a terrific vantage point which I shared with a few others, one a 60 odd year-old woman with MS. Her efforts were heroic in getting to some of the places – a very determined woman. Hooray for her!

Then it was back to the ship to sail a little further north to another glacier – El Brujo. There was to be no landing there so they launched the zodiac for a cruise while a few hardy souls went kayaking. It was their first time in the water. so they were excited We decided to watch from onboard - little did we know they took champagne out in the zodiacs. Such a French thing to do - they open bottles at the drop of a hat. This was a magnificent 2 km wide glacial front. The erosion/sastrugi that pockmarks the surface create dazzling shapes in all shades of blue. These ancient glaciers reached their maximum extent during the last glacial period which ended about 10,000 years ago. A mind boggling time period to contemplate. As the global temperatures increased, the glaciers retreated leaving bare the deep wide valleys they had ground out. As the sea levels rose and the glaciers melted, the valleys were flooded forming the fjords we were sailing in. Amazing to contemplate the massive changes time and tenperaute can impose. - it's an every changing world.

El Brujo glacier

Zoom in and look at the amazing shapes and colours

They towed the kayaks out away from the ship for people to climb in to. The water was full of ice .

The zodiacs are dwarfed by the size of that gnarly blue face

That night was one of the Gala nights the ship hosts – tonight the ‘White Night’. Amazing to see the outfits people had packed. Needless to say we light-packers''dined casually in Restaurant La Boussole (along with other similar minded people).