11/02/17 Punta Arenas and the Magellan Strait
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After four flights we finally reached our destination of Punta Arenas, Chile, situated on the north side of the Magellan Strait in deepest Patagonia. Here we joined the Fred. Olsen owned cruise ship Boudicca on my latest speaker tour. Among other things I would be lecturing on the birds and cetaceans of the region. I was accompanied on this occasion by my fellow ecologist and cetacean enthusiast Anthony (Anno) Brandreth. Ship business prevented us from exploring ashore so we had to content ourselves with a session viewing the Magellan Straits from Deck 10.
Brown-hooded and Kelp gulls were much in evidence, as was Chilean Skua, Souther...
All images are authentic to the tour and copyright © Jeff Clarke unless otherwise stated. Click on images to view at full size.
I’d just returned from a dramatically foreshortened cruise, where a five-week tour had been truncated to one-week due to Covid-19 complications, so you’d imagine I’d be sceptical about accepting an offer to join Viking Jupiter in Chile, with just two weeks’ notice to embarkation. As someone who is generally one of life’s optimists, I perceived the logistical hurdles as surmountable and the pull of possibilities as irresistible.
So it was that Laura and I boarded Viking Jupiter in the early afternoon of 11th February 2022. The ship would spend two nights in Valparaíso before departure. On embarkati...
