Navimagging (part i)

Gaucho gaucho man, Johnny Callaghan, took us to his local store to purchase cheap but tasty wine. On the way he informed us with a twinkling eye, 'I'm 45, single and happy, but don't know how many kids I've got!' Interesting. Val & I stock up with four litres of red Conch Y Torro vino and a load of snacks, thank JC for his trouble and push on to check onto the Navimag.

The Navimag is a cargo ship that sails up and down the Chilean coast from Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt. Back in the 80s & 90s adventurous travellers used to backhand shiphands to stow away on cargo ships up the beautiful uninhabited Fjords. The company Navimag entrepreneurially saw an opportunity and created various pokey passenger cabins (sleeping approx. 300) and offered tourists expensive 4 day 'cruise' options up a maze of channels (sometimes only 80m wide), past snowy peaks, waterfalls and heaving glaciers.

We checked in, dropped our bags, left the crew to load the big old ship with livestock and trucks and wandered back into town to kill a few hours. In a bookshop café I perused various Pategonian photo books (look up the work of Pablo Valenzuela Vaillant, for he be bo) and (on my freshly movified gadget) watched my very first episode of the Mighty Boosh and the 1st of 24 season 6! Damn it, if Jack Bauer ain't the coolest man alive I dunno who is!

Aboard the Navimag vessel my first impression as we're herded onto a greasy hydraulic lift in the main hold is that this really is a cargo ship, and it smells of cow. Orange clad crew help us find our cabins. Our bags are on our respective beds and fortunately the 1.5 litre bottles of red are in one piece and haven't tie died my clothes. Due to unavailability in the steerage 12 berth 'D' dorm, we're in a pimped 4-berth A-class room (US$420 per bunk instead of $355).

It's still a shoebox of a room, clearly not designed for four grown ups to move in at any one time, but room 108 is home for 4 nights. Along with Swiss Valerie, we're joined by English Nick (a London photograph fan with a quality camera and almost see-through hair) and French Juliet (oo az ze outraaaageously Fwench accent to go wizz eat, but doesn't really like chocolate, wine or cheese!). We unload our alcohol and see we're on the same page, with stacks of biscuits, crisps and a shed-load of red. We fill a cupboard with booze and at the safety video in the common room we smile at one another when it suggests 'Not to consume alcohol to excess'. The video also says 'Sitting on the board is very dangerous'. Not a clue what that means, so I might spend four days standing just in case.

After the meeting on goes the movie 'The Motorcycle Diaries' about the local South American hero, Che Guevara. Over the course of the journey they play 'apt' films. 'March of the Penguins' (Antarctic), '8 Below' (rubbish snowy dog film) and 'Pirates of the Caribbean 2' (sea theme). I was surprised when they didn't play 'Titanic' or 'The Poisidon adventure'. Though instead of laugh at 'El Che' fall of his bike, as I'd done before, I unsociably slipped back to the cabin for my 24 hit...

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We wake up to an excellent sunrise and take the breakfast buffet at 8am. Dining in shifts, by room number groups reduces the pressure of 300 gannets hoping to get their 400 dollars worth of passable food. After the fishy scrambled egg breaky the ship shows off it's super manoeuvrable 'manual automatic' steering system (oxymoron much?) to navigate through tiny passes. Having loads of thrusters all round the boat means it can even drive sideways. We're all allowed onto the bridge at any time to watch el capetan do his thang, cruising round the misty fjords.

Later on we pass a bizarre shipwreck that looks like a ghost ship. Apparently, the story is thus: The captain of Greek ship 'Coto Baxi', loaded with a cargo of sugar bound for Chile, decided to pull an insurance job on his boat. So he sold his sugar early in Uruguay and when he hit the Chilean Fjords he deliberately ran aground to sink it. In doing so he destroyed his ship, but accidentally parked it on an underwater shelf, so it wouldn't sink. Insurance came to have a looksy and got suspicious when there was no sugar, so he ended up going to jail for 3 years. Denied! Now, 18 years later, his ship has become an important lighthouse warning other ships not to park there. Being open to the elements all that time it's rusted to hell, it's full of holes and the turret has fallen forward, but yet it sits above the waves and looks like it's moving. Very bizarre.

Lunch at noon. Food on top of food, with no real exercise in between to promote digestion (hours of 24, exciting as it is, doesn't count). We pass a mammoth glacier, one of the visible tongues of the hidden and unimaginably vast Southern Pategonian Ice Field. The spitting rain, cold temperatures and grey cloud all felt terribly English, wot. Jolly shame I didn't bring my brolly. Bad form.

The 'informative seasickness meeting' in the common area was informative. We were warmed that round fourteen hundred hours we leave the protective fjords and spend the rest of the day cutting round the Golfo de peñas mainland, through open Pacific where waves range between 2 and 6m high. All are offered complimentary seasickness pills and advised not to lean against windows, not to look at the floor too long, and to move slowly slowly. If things get real bad we're advised to take up the foetal position on the floor 'like you was when borned'.

I've never been seasick in my life and I ain't takin no medicine. I'm like a child on a rocky boat. I tend to get over excitable and run about. So come 2pm when we literally hit the open sea (or it hit us) I shuffled up to the front and rode the bow with a bright eyed German named Christoph. The waves were indeed massive, more like a bank of smaller waves piled onto moving hills of water. The massive ship was pitched and dropped over these, causing the front to smash down into the sea sending a shower skyward.

As much fun as I was having, I won't lie that it came somewhat as a relief when we were informed that we had to turn back and find shelter in a natural harbour and wait for the bad weather to pass. The natural harbour we eventually anchored looked like something off Jurassic Park. A beautiful misty inlet surrounded by waterfalls and fading blue grey mountains. A smiling Brit couple and I decide to try and spread bogus rumours that we overheard the captain saying we'd probably have to stay here a week, and we'd run out of food well before then. But it was difficult to keep a straight face.

After the sun had fallen, 24 all watched and dinner put away, the red wines and cards came out. Aussy 'Asshole', Brit 'Wist' and Argey 'Mau Mau' were the games of choice. The local beer for sale at the bar, 'Kunstmann' caused much tittering. For example, 'I love the Kunst Man' was heard more than once.


Captain Barnacle