Amalia Glacier, Chile

This morning we got the opportunity to see the Amalia Glacier, and to be honest, after the Captain’s midday announcements yesterday, I didn’t think we would get to see it at all.  The weather forecast was for heavy fog and rain, and Capt Arma was apologising in advance if the fog horns ‘were to be disturbing any passenger’ (he’s adorable).

Anyway, we arrived in the channel quite early and from our cabin on Deck 11 forward (Sea Princess A212 if anyone wants to look it up on a deck plan), just under/behind the bridge – I could see from our cabin:

Pretty!  The Amalia Glacier (aka the Skua Glacier) is in the Bernardo O’Higgins National Park in Chile. The glacier starts in the Southern Patagonian Ice Fields and originates at the Recleus volcano – it is actually eroding the northern slope of that volcano.

The glacier had actually retreated from the 40s to the 80s by about 8 km, and I thought our on guide expert dude said it had retreated double that since then  :/  (need to confirm that).  A lot of people you talk to down here are very worried about climate change.  Dixie in Valparaiso was talking about severe coastal erosion over the last two decades, and Jaime in Puerto Varas was saying that they usually only have weather in the mid-20s during summer, but that the last few summers have seen them copping high temperatures of 34C!  Not only that, but people are able to swim in the water in the glacial streams – which they all say was impossible when they were kids.

Cruising the glaciers is truly amazing, this one was still several kilometres from us, but while we were here, a small ship carrying around 200 passengers, the Skorpios II, came up to the glacier and went so close we could barely see if – it looked like a rock near the face of the glacier.  Skoprios operates out of Punta Arenas and they do 3-night trips to come see the glaciers in this area… definitely adding that to the Bucket List.