November 3
As we suspected, they asked us to check in for our ferry ride (9-10 am) many hours before we actually got to board the ferry (1 pm). But the Navimag office had good wifi so we hung around there for at least an hour or two. We tried to do some more problem solving with/for Ignacio…Super Hero Butts continued to be a strong character in our story. If our bikes make it back to the states, we owe it to her just as much as Ignacio.
The port where we were to board was about 15 km outside of Puerto Montt. We decided to just ride and wait out there, as in town we would have to do annoying things like pay-to-park. We got our motos checked in (i.e., a piece of paper taped to them) then after being asked to move several times, we followed a ferry worker in a van. I didn’t mind how long we had to wait there because there were South American sea lions around us. There were these giant orange buoys on all sides of the ferry and there were sea lions on each one. They were so petite and quiet, nothing like California sea lions. Eventually we loaded up on the ferry with the cows and hay. Well, we followed the hay on the ferry but not the cows. We saw the cows ready to board though, piled high in their truck. They get moved around via ferry in Southern Chile (as there are no roads) to ensure they have enough to eat throughout the year. We were probably the first customers on the boat, as it felt like a ghost ship when we boarded up to the top deck. There were no “fancy” crew around (they showed up later), but that was great! It meant an inspection-free boarding and we smuggled our bag of wine and snacks with no problem. Within a few hours there were ~75 people loading up, getting their bags half-hazardously searched and escorted to their rooms with the help of a dozen red-suited Navimag employees. Most of the ferry-goers had dressed just like Navimag said to in the informational email (hiking boots, zippy pants, puffy coat, and hat). We totally blended in. They are all seemingly affluent travelers, lots of Europeans. We are the only two from USAmerica. There are two men in BMW jackets, but they seemed a little intimidating. Also from what I can tell they are speaking Castilian, so we couldn’t keep up with the conversation anyway.
Our host is Purcey, a naturalist who will tell us about what we will be riding through and what kind of cetacean we see if and when we see one. He is a jolly fellow, speaks five languages, and thoroughly read the roster of guests before we all boarded. He asked us where we were from and when we said USAmerica he remembered that there were two people from Portland, Oregon on motos. Based on his performance during our safety presentation, I think he will be entertaining. The only part of everything so far that we are unhappy with is the schedule. Breakfast is from 8-9 (so we have to get up to get coffee, we can’t sleep in), lunch is 12:30-1:30 (fine, whatever), and dinner is 7:30-8:30. Grandma and Grandpa said “ugh”. Tonight was farmed Chilean salmon. No thank you. I’ll have extra onion soup and the peanut butter crackers I smuggled from Puerto Montt.
Once we took off Ernesto and I sat on a bench and watched the harbor disappear. Not even 10 minutes into our departure we saw a cetacean. We couldn’t tell what it was. It was slow and looked like it had two blow holes (like a mysticeti), but it seemed small for a baleen whale.There is a great poster in the ferry about the most common species of whales and dolphins and what they look like, but it is of no help. They show all the species as side-view, color drawings. I hate it when they do that. We don’t see whales from the side in full color. We see dark little pieces of their backs on dark and glaring backgrounds, and if we are lucky, an exhale or a glimpse of their tales. Tell us how to identify them in the real world!
Our room is insanely small. Ridiculously small. It consists of a very narrow walkway, two cubbies (each with a shelf), and a set of bunk beds that aren’t even twin mattresses. Barely two feet across. The bunk beds are so small you can’t even sit upright in them and with the stupid curtains they have on both ends, they are really claustrophobic. Knowing neither of us could sleep in either bed bunk, we moved the top bunk mattress to the floor. It barely fits through the wall and bunk beds. It will be tight for sleeping, but we can both sit on it very comfortably. The door swings into the room so we can barely open the door enough to get in, but we aren’t complaining. During the evening hours we have privacy, back support, Kindles, and wine. They have 9:30 pm entertainment in the dining room. We win.
November 4
After breakfast we again sat outside. This time with our sleeping bags and it made for a much cozier bench experience. This boat could really use a few lounge chairs. Like yesterday, not even ten minutes into our day of watching the world go by we saw marine mammals. More South American sea lions. Bueno.
The midday event was a natural history lecture by Purcey. There was a bit of nonsense in his presentation (particularly some BS about avian monogamy), but (if true) we learned some interesting things. In no particular order... The Patagonian ice flats are the third largest in the world (after Antarctica and Greenland). E and I have been seeing another species of caracara that we didn’t know was a caracara. There are 600,000 people in all of Southern Chile-Argentina, making the human to land ratio .4 people per square km. It is one of the most undeveloped places in the world. Why? There is less than a foot of soil here and below that is granite. Nothing but granite. This means no (sustainable) agriculture and no groundwater. Ahh. Can this explain all of Patagonia’s lack of development??? Although maybe they wouldn’t need ground water as the western Patagonia region gets up to nine meters of rainfall a year. Really? That is almost 30 feet! And he told us the biggest albatross here has a four meter wingspan. Really? That is over 13 feet! I was very impressed that he personally took all the photos in his PowerPoint presentation. He has clearly spent a lot of time watching animals throughout Patagonia, and he showed whales as whales are really seen by humans from a boat, not as by poster.
I spent most of lunch listening to the table of late 20-somethings behind me. They were speaking in English and I was being nosey. They were talking about elephants and East Africa. Comparing stories. And by comparing, I mean they were trying to one-up the other in terms of their experiences. I was hating on them and then remembered I’ve been to East Africa and thought I had amazing elephant experiences. Dammit! I ignored them for a bit but then got sucked back in when they were talking about seafood and crabs. One of them talked about having an octopus as a pet and it was “soo amazing!!!” I was really hating on them and then I remembered that we had an octopus in the lab for a while. Dammit!
We are back out on the deck. I’m in my sleeping bag. Ernie has his guitarra. The water has turned to glass. This makes it very easy to see all the sea lion flippers waving to us. They are not putting their flippers above water to cool them as Purcey says, they are doing this to say hello specifically to Ernesto y Tara.
There is one couple on the boat that has stood out to us, and not in a good way. We are calling them “the white hairs”. They are pretentious and entitled. The kind of people who seemingly refuse to wait in line. Especially for something as basic as food. They are too good to even say “descuple” or “excuse me” when they cut in line. And they only sit in window seats. They are seat savers to ensure their spots. They are from England and I am hating on them like I did with the elephant and octopus kids. Ernesto is lighter about it and says they are doofuses. Our narrative about them includes that they live in a very nice house with bamboo flooring and concrete countertops. If their faucet were leaking they wouldn’t know how to fix it. They would explain the reason why they couldn't’ fix the faucet was because it was so far beneath them. They are carrying big backpacks… everywhere they go on this boat they have their passports, binocs, field guides, and 10K USD worth of camera equipment. Except for the dining room, I have yet to see the man without his camera in a “ready to shoot!” position, as if the whale is going to breach RIGHT NOW. Doofuses.
November 5
During breakfast Purcey announced the presence of a pod of orcas off the front of the boat, so like everyone else on board we went outside. They were far away but we could still hear them. Bueno. After the pod disappeared the two motorcyclists came up and talked to us! They weren’t nearly as intimidating as they seemed ha ha. Uncle Alery and nephew Nicolas. I guess they parked behind us on the ferry and thought they would easily find us once onboard. They finally asked Purcey who the two other motorcyclists were and told him the white couple with the girl in the green shirt. We must have talked for two hours. Everything from motos to politics (in English). He is from Los Andes, which is the first town at the base of the mountains on the Argentina-Chile border where we crossed (2500m below where the aduana is). Alery lived in Washington DC for about 15 years in the 70’s and 80’s and both his daughters were born there. He was a very nice, very outgoing, and we enjoying our chat with him. It was also nice to have someone to say “Buenos tardes” to for the next few days. They are also going to Ushuaia and informed us that the motorcycle rally is November 15, not December 15 as we had previously heard. Huh. With no intentional planning whatsoever we will be in Ushuaia when they have their annual moto rally. Crazy.
All the salmon farms we have seen have been small and scattered… there must be another place they are farming…
The weather today has been truly amazing. Near epic. According to Purcey there are 15 sunny days a year here and we managed to hit one of the few, if ever, non-summer ones. Besides just sitting in the warm sun watching the beauty of Chile go by, our highlights of the day were crossing through the narrowest part of our journey and flightless steamer ducks. The narrowest part is called Angostura Inglesa and it is just north of the village Puerto Eden. I think Ernest and I were the last two people to get up to the top deck to watch, and when I thought about trying to get closer I noticed the white hairs had pushed and shoved their way into the front and center. Ernie and I just went off to the side. It was pretty cool, and there was even a Jesus statue. It has been fun to geek out with the map and follow our travels by boat as we’ve never done that with a water map before. Flightless steamer ducks are critters I talk about in almost all my classes and I never thought I would get to see them. And we saw a pair today, and they did their famous running on the water. They are called “steamer” ducks because when they run on the water they flap their tiny little wings in a way that reminded someone of a steamboat. They have giant orange feet and are much bigger in person than expected. Oh, and we got to see a tiny tiny piece of the Patagonian ice flat.
November 6
We picked up six or eight more passengers in Puerto Evan yesterday and all of them are smokers. This is the last day of the ferry ride and over the past three days everyone has sort of found their niche on the boat. Ernesto and I have the second bench from the back, portside. The solo Finnish traveller as the second bench from the front of the boat, also portside. The Chilean moto men stand front and center next to the compass at the bow of the boat. A funny territoriality amongst ferry-goers… Any way, with no benches left, the newcomers have decided that standing portside is their hangout, and with or without a breeze we are getting their smoke. We could move, but all the other niches are full. Sigh. It is 2017 Navimag! Second hand smoke is a known carcinogen; you need a designated smoking area or smoke-free section of this ferry.
That complaint aside, it was another beautiful day. Partly cloudy and not very windy or cold for most of it (I mean, I was still in my sleeping bag all day). We could see more of the Patagonian ice flat and some very western bits of Torres del Paine National Park. Some seriously white glaciers and steep and jagged peaks. The ocean is again calm and like glass, but black.
I finished two more books on the ferry ride. “White Trash” by Nancy Isenberg and Plastic” by Susan Freinkel. More on “Plastic” later (as I’m angry and sad and need to process), but “White Trash” was very educational. It unpacked the history of “white trash” in USAmerica starting in the 1600’s and on up through the 2016 Presidential election. The take home messages were (eventually) clear in her (not so clear) writing: Americans don’t like to talk about class and since its founding (i.e., “all men are created equal”) we have been saying one thing and doing another. The presence of white trash could quite possibly suffocate the future economic and social success of our country. Who is to blame? Everyone.
Our last silly story of the Navimag ferry… There are two young-ish men on this trip that have been bounding about with some serious photographic equipment. Ernesto and I have beencalling them “National Geographic”. They even have a drone that they used when we went through the narrowest part of the channel. As we were headed to today’s Purcey lecture on Torres del Paine, one of them says, “Hola, where are you two from?”. We say “Los Estados Unidos” and he says “I’ve been looking for you!”. Long story short they (Martin and Eduardo) are doing a promotional piece for Navimag and wants stories of why people choose to take the Navimag ferry through Southern Chile. A bit into things Ernesto told them there were two other motorcyclists on the trip as well, and Martin says “Yeah but they are from Chile”. We are of interest because we are from USAmerica. Funny how that all came around. They took some canned video of us looking at our map of Chile and some video of me blogging. I intentionally wrote about salmon farms during the filming of me blogging so I hope that screen makes it to the video. Luckily all the interview questions were audio only (phew). It was a fun hour. The only annoying part was when he was asking me questions about “this way of traveling” which included bunk beds, getting your own tray of food, and getting to eat meals with strangers/other travelers and “make new friends”. We are totally fine with the food tray thing and Ernesto and I figured out how to not sleep in the bunk beds, but we actually didn’t eat a single meal with another traveler. We made some small talk once; we didn’t make new friends. Yet he kept probing me to mention the “new friends” thing. I accommodated him when we asked me to repeat “ferry” for “Navimag ferry”, but I wasn’t going to be so insincere as to say Ernie and I had a meal with anyone. Grandma and Grandpa eat alone and like it. In between E and I’s interviews we were waiting for a change of battery and we asked Martin whether he worked for Navimag. The answer was no, and indeed he used to work for National Geographic. Drugs in Mexico. Gangs in Colombia. He saw someone get shot and now that he has a son he decided to work for himself as a freelancer doing jobs like ferry rides in Patagonia. The last huzzah of our interactions with them was video footage of us leaving the ferry on our motos. We were surprised that they actually stuck around, as it took a good two hours for us to get off the boat once we docked (but it went by quick as we had Alery and Nicolas as good company). Actually it was only Eduardo that took the video, and we weren’t sure what happened to Martin. But funny enough, when we were at dinner in downtown Puerto Natales an hour later, Martin recognized us through the window and waved at us and entered the restaurant. He said thanks again for the footage and apologized for not being there for our ferry ride off. We hope his freelance business grows, that his video comes out as he imagined, and we really did like taking the Navimag ferry.
As we suspected, they asked us to check in for our ferry ride (9-10 am) many hours before we actually got to board the ferry (1 pm). But the Navimag office had good wifi so we hung around there for at least an hour or two. We tried to do some more problem solving with/for Ignacio…Super Hero Butts continued to be a strong character in our story. If our bikes make it back to the states, we owe it to her just as much as Ignacio.
The port where we were to board was about 15 km outside of Puerto Montt. We decided to just ride and wait out there, as in town we would have to do annoying things like pay-to-park. We got our motos checked in (i.e., a piece of paper taped to them) then after being asked to move several times, we followed a ferry worker in a van. I didn’t mind how long we had to wait there because there were South American sea lions around us. There were these giant orange buoys on all sides of the ferry and there were sea lions on each one. They were so petite and quiet, nothing like California sea lions. Eventually we loaded up on the ferry with the cows and hay. Well, we followed the hay on the ferry but not the cows. We saw the cows ready to board though, piled high in their truck. They get moved around via ferry in Southern Chile (as there are no roads) to ensure they have enough to eat throughout the year. We were probably the first customers on the boat, as it felt like a ghost ship when we boarded up to the top deck. There were no “fancy” crew around (they showed up later), but that was great! It meant an inspection-free boarding and we smuggled our bag of wine and snacks with no problem. Within a few hours there were ~75 people loading up, getting their bags half-hazardously searched and escorted to their rooms with the help of a dozen red-suited Navimag employees. Most of the ferry-goers had dressed just like Navimag said to in the informational email (hiking boots, zippy pants, puffy coat, and hat). We totally blended in. They are all seemingly affluent travelers, lots of Europeans. We are the only two from USAmerica. There are two men in BMW jackets, but they seemed a little intimidating. Also from what I can tell they are speaking Castilian, so we couldn’t keep up with the conversation anyway.
Our host is Purcey, a naturalist who will tell us about what we will be riding through and what kind of cetacean we see if and when we see one. He is a jolly fellow, speaks five languages, and thoroughly read the roster of guests before we all boarded. He asked us where we were from and when we said USAmerica he remembered that there were two people from Portland, Oregon on motos. Based on his performance during our safety presentation, I think he will be entertaining. The only part of everything so far that we are unhappy with is the schedule. Breakfast is from 8-9 (so we have to get up to get coffee, we can’t sleep in), lunch is 12:30-1:30 (fine, whatever), and dinner is 7:30-8:30. Grandma and Grandpa said “ugh”. Tonight was farmed Chilean salmon. No thank you. I’ll have extra onion soup and the peanut butter crackers I smuggled from Puerto Montt.
Once we took off Ernesto and I sat on a bench and watched the harbor disappear. Not even 10 minutes into our departure we saw a cetacean. We couldn’t tell what it was. It was slow and looked like it had two blow holes (like a mysticeti), but it seemed small for a baleen whale.There is a great poster in the ferry about the most common species of whales and dolphins and what they look like, but it is of no help. They show all the species as side-view, color drawings. I hate it when they do that. We don’t see whales from the side in full color. We see dark little pieces of their backs on dark and glaring backgrounds, and if we are lucky, an exhale or a glimpse of their tales. Tell us how to identify them in the real world!
Our room is insanely small. Ridiculously small. It consists of a very narrow walkway, two cubbies (each with a shelf), and a set of bunk beds that aren’t even twin mattresses. Barely two feet across. The bunk beds are so small you can’t even sit upright in them and with the stupid curtains they have on both ends, they are really claustrophobic. Knowing neither of us could sleep in either bed bunk, we moved the top bunk mattress to the floor. It barely fits through the wall and bunk beds. It will be tight for sleeping, but we can both sit on it very comfortably. The door swings into the room so we can barely open the door enough to get in, but we aren’t complaining. During the evening hours we have privacy, back support, Kindles, and wine. They have 9:30 pm entertainment in the dining room. We win.
November 4
After breakfast we again sat outside. This time with our sleeping bags and it made for a much cozier bench experience. This boat could really use a few lounge chairs. Like yesterday, not even ten minutes into our day of watching the world go by we saw marine mammals. More South American sea lions. Bueno.
The midday event was a natural history lecture by Purcey. There was a bit of nonsense in his presentation (particularly some BS about avian monogamy), but (if true) we learned some interesting things. In no particular order... The Patagonian ice flats are the third largest in the world (after Antarctica and Greenland). E and I have been seeing another species of caracara that we didn’t know was a caracara. There are 600,000 people in all of Southern Chile-Argentina, making the human to land ratio .4 people per square km. It is one of the most undeveloped places in the world. Why? There is less than a foot of soil here and below that is granite. Nothing but granite. This means no (sustainable) agriculture and no groundwater. Ahh. Can this explain all of Patagonia’s lack of development??? Although maybe they wouldn’t need ground water as the western Patagonia region gets up to nine meters of rainfall a year. Really? That is almost 30 feet! And he told us the biggest albatross here has a four meter wingspan. Really? That is over 13 feet! I was very impressed that he personally took all the photos in his PowerPoint presentation. He has clearly spent a lot of time watching animals throughout Patagonia, and he showed whales as whales are really seen by humans from a boat, not as by poster.
I spent most of lunch listening to the table of late 20-somethings behind me. They were speaking in English and I was being nosey. They were talking about elephants and East Africa. Comparing stories. And by comparing, I mean they were trying to one-up the other in terms of their experiences. I was hating on them and then remembered I’ve been to East Africa and thought I had amazing elephant experiences. Dammit! I ignored them for a bit but then got sucked back in when they were talking about seafood and crabs. One of them talked about having an octopus as a pet and it was “soo amazing!!!” I was really hating on them and then I remembered that we had an octopus in the lab for a while. Dammit!
We are back out on the deck. I’m in my sleeping bag. Ernie has his guitarra. The water has turned to glass. This makes it very easy to see all the sea lion flippers waving to us. They are not putting their flippers above water to cool them as Purcey says, they are doing this to say hello specifically to Ernesto y Tara.
There is one couple on the boat that has stood out to us, and not in a good way. We are calling them “the white hairs”. They are pretentious and entitled. The kind of people who seemingly refuse to wait in line. Especially for something as basic as food. They are too good to even say “descuple” or “excuse me” when they cut in line. And they only sit in window seats. They are seat savers to ensure their spots. They are from England and I am hating on them like I did with the elephant and octopus kids. Ernesto is lighter about it and says they are doofuses. Our narrative about them includes that they live in a very nice house with bamboo flooring and concrete countertops. If their faucet were leaking they wouldn’t know how to fix it. They would explain the reason why they couldn't’ fix the faucet was because it was so far beneath them. They are carrying big backpacks… everywhere they go on this boat they have their passports, binocs, field guides, and 10K USD worth of camera equipment. Except for the dining room, I have yet to see the man without his camera in a “ready to shoot!” position, as if the whale is going to breach RIGHT NOW. Doofuses.
November 5
During breakfast Purcey announced the presence of a pod of orcas off the front of the boat, so like everyone else on board we went outside. They were far away but we could still hear them. Bueno. After the pod disappeared the two motorcyclists came up and talked to us! They weren’t nearly as intimidating as they seemed ha ha. Uncle Alery and nephew Nicolas. I guess they parked behind us on the ferry and thought they would easily find us once onboard. They finally asked Purcey who the two other motorcyclists were and told him the white couple with the girl in the green shirt. We must have talked for two hours. Everything from motos to politics (in English). He is from Los Andes, which is the first town at the base of the mountains on the Argentina-Chile border where we crossed (2500m below where the aduana is). Alery lived in Washington DC for about 15 years in the 70’s and 80’s and both his daughters were born there. He was a very nice, very outgoing, and we enjoying our chat with him. It was also nice to have someone to say “Buenos tardes” to for the next few days. They are also going to Ushuaia and informed us that the motorcycle rally is November 15, not December 15 as we had previously heard. Huh. With no intentional planning whatsoever we will be in Ushuaia when they have their annual moto rally. Crazy.
All the salmon farms we have seen have been small and scattered… there must be another place they are farming…
The weather today has been truly amazing. Near epic. According to Purcey there are 15 sunny days a year here and we managed to hit one of the few, if ever, non-summer ones. Besides just sitting in the warm sun watching the beauty of Chile go by, our highlights of the day were crossing through the narrowest part of our journey and flightless steamer ducks. The narrowest part is called Angostura Inglesa and it is just north of the village Puerto Eden. I think Ernest and I were the last two people to get up to the top deck to watch, and when I thought about trying to get closer I noticed the white hairs had pushed and shoved their way into the front and center. Ernie and I just went off to the side. It was pretty cool, and there was even a Jesus statue. It has been fun to geek out with the map and follow our travels by boat as we’ve never done that with a water map before. Flightless steamer ducks are critters I talk about in almost all my classes and I never thought I would get to see them. And we saw a pair today, and they did their famous running on the water. They are called “steamer” ducks because when they run on the water they flap their tiny little wings in a way that reminded someone of a steamboat. They have giant orange feet and are much bigger in person than expected. Oh, and we got to see a tiny tiny piece of the Patagonian ice flat.
November 6
We picked up six or eight more passengers in Puerto Evan yesterday and all of them are smokers. This is the last day of the ferry ride and over the past three days everyone has sort of found their niche on the boat. Ernesto and I have the second bench from the back, portside. The solo Finnish traveller as the second bench from the front of the boat, also portside. The Chilean moto men stand front and center next to the compass at the bow of the boat. A funny territoriality amongst ferry-goers… Any way, with no benches left, the newcomers have decided that standing portside is their hangout, and with or without a breeze we are getting their smoke. We could move, but all the other niches are full. Sigh. It is 2017 Navimag! Second hand smoke is a known carcinogen; you need a designated smoking area or smoke-free section of this ferry.
That complaint aside, it was another beautiful day. Partly cloudy and not very windy or cold for most of it (I mean, I was still in my sleeping bag all day). We could see more of the Patagonian ice flat and some very western bits of Torres del Paine National Park. Some seriously white glaciers and steep and jagged peaks. The ocean is again calm and like glass, but black.
I finished two more books on the ferry ride. “White Trash” by Nancy Isenberg and Plastic” by Susan Freinkel. More on “Plastic” later (as I’m angry and sad and need to process), but “White Trash” was very educational. It unpacked the history of “white trash” in USAmerica starting in the 1600’s and on up through the 2016 Presidential election. The take home messages were (eventually) clear in her (not so clear) writing: Americans don’t like to talk about class and since its founding (i.e., “all men are created equal”) we have been saying one thing and doing another. The presence of white trash could quite possibly suffocate the future economic and social success of our country. Who is to blame? Everyone.
Our last silly story of the Navimag ferry… There are two young-ish men on this trip that have been bounding about with some serious photographic equipment. Ernesto and I have beencalling them “National Geographic”. They even have a drone that they used when we went through the narrowest part of the channel. As we were headed to today’s Purcey lecture on Torres del Paine, one of them says, “Hola, where are you two from?”. We say “Los Estados Unidos” and he says “I’ve been looking for you!”. Long story short they (Martin and Eduardo) are doing a promotional piece for Navimag and wants stories of why people choose to take the Navimag ferry through Southern Chile. A bit into things Ernesto told them there were two other motorcyclists on the trip as well, and Martin says “Yeah but they are from Chile”. We are of interest because we are from USAmerica. Funny how that all came around. They took some canned video of us looking at our map of Chile and some video of me blogging. I intentionally wrote about salmon farms during the filming of me blogging so I hope that screen makes it to the video. Luckily all the interview questions were audio only (phew). It was a fun hour. The only annoying part was when he was asking me questions about “this way of traveling” which included bunk beds, getting your own tray of food, and getting to eat meals with strangers/other travelers and “make new friends”. We are totally fine with the food tray thing and Ernesto and I figured out how to not sleep in the bunk beds, but we actually didn’t eat a single meal with another traveler. We made some small talk once; we didn’t make new friends. Yet he kept probing me to mention the “new friends” thing. I accommodated him when we asked me to repeat “ferry” for “Navimag ferry”, but I wasn’t going to be so insincere as to say Ernie and I had a meal with anyone. Grandma and Grandpa eat alone and like it. In between E and I’s interviews we were waiting for a change of battery and we asked Martin whether he worked for Navimag. The answer was no, and indeed he used to work for National Geographic. Drugs in Mexico. Gangs in Colombia. He saw someone get shot and now that he has a son he decided to work for himself as a freelancer doing jobs like ferry rides in Patagonia. The last huzzah of our interactions with them was video footage of us leaving the ferry on our motos. We were surprised that they actually stuck around, as it took a good two hours for us to get off the boat once we docked (but it went by quick as we had Alery and Nicolas as good company). Actually it was only Eduardo that took the video, and we weren’t sure what happened to Martin. But funny enough, when we were at dinner in downtown Puerto Natales an hour later, Martin recognized us through the window and waved at us and entered the restaurant. He said thanks again for the footage and apologized for not being there for our ferry ride off. We hope his freelance business grows, that his video comes out as he imagined, and we really did like taking the Navimag ferry.