Navimag and a very large earthquke.

photos: Meryl abord the Evangelistas, Crashed sugar ship from 1969, cheesy meryl and Forrest at Puerto Eden, boat and glacier Pio IX, sunset in Puerto Natales

I think that Forrest and I found out about the earthquke just north of us after most of you did. We left Puerto Montt, Chile on Friday at about 5pm on the Navimag Ferry the "Evagelistas". The weather was amazing and the scenery incredible, we sailed past huge volcanos, through amazing channels on our large barge. The earthquke occured during our first night on the ferry. We had no idea that anything happened, until the announced arround 11am the following morning. They informed us on the loud speakers that there had been and earthquke in Chile, but they didn't know any details. Around 5pm that night they called a meeting on the boat to inform the passengers of what they knew at that point. We were told that the earthquke was a 9.2 and that the town of Conception was completly destroyed, and severe damage extended arround the area and to the north. They told us that lage builings in Santiago had collapsed and the airport was closed, but they didn't have much more info than that. It was difficult to grasp, we had just sailed out of the channels and into the ocean, we had seen Blue Whales, dolphins, birds, Sea Lions, amazing mountains and volcanos, and incredible sunny calm Patagoninan weather, so it was hard to imagine the destruction that had occured several hundred km north of us. The following day was just as amazing, we visited the Town of Puerto Eden located in the middle of nowhere, and then we took a side channel detour for about 4 hours so that we could see the Pio XI glacier, the largest glacier in South America! It was amazing! Our huge boat floated right up to the end of it, past ice-bergs that had been cleaving off. We got within 60m of the terminus and it was incredible. They sent out a life boat with some crew members to collect some of the Glacier Ice, so that we could enjoy it in our cocktails, haha! It was a huge highlight for me to be so close to that amazing river of ice. On monday early afternoon we sailed into Puerto Natales, the first semi-flat area we have seen in Patagonia. It took about an hour to dock our large ship in this small port before we could disembark.

Forrest and I went out to a fancy dinner our first night here to a place called "Afrigonia" were african and patagonian food are combined... delish! We both had some of the best sea-food that either of us had ever eaten, and we topped it off with a Kilmajaro chocolate cake for desert!

Yesterday we spent the day wandering the town, and learning of the massive devistaiton of one of the largest earthqukes in history. If you would like to see some good photos check out this fliker site:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rlinfati/
We were very lucky to be on the boat when we were. We drove through the epicenter of the earthquke in a bus about 48hrs before it occured and we got on on the boat about 8 hours before.

We head off to Torres del Paine national park to do some backpacking for the next 5 days. Afterwards we head to Ushuaia (the southenmost town in america) before heading to Santiago. Forrest heads home in 2 weeks... three months has flown by!