The editor continues with his report on an exciting cruise on Regal Princess taking in Chile, Argentine, The Falklands and Uruguay: Santiago, Valparaiso, Puerto Montt and Punta Arenas were covered here: This week it is on to Ushuaia, Cape Horn, Stanley, Port Madryn, Montevideo and finally Buenos Aires.
”Punta Arenas in Chile is the most southerly city on the mainland of South America and just one night”s cruising down the Magellan Straights and Beagle Channel to the most southerly city on earth, USHUAIA (Argentine), on the island of Terra del Feugo. It was here 100 years ago that Argentine built their version of Devils Island and Alcatraz. Convicts worked in the most cold of conditions but the jail itself was of solid construction and survives (as an interesting museum) until today. However the finest relic of a bygone age is the Tren Del Fin Del Mundo ”The end of the world train” which took the prisoners 25 kilometres up into the forests that surround the town to lay bare great tracts of land in the pursuit of timber for heating and building work. The little narrow gauge railway is also a survivor of a bygone age and well worth the visit. On the way up you pass a golf course, its cultivated greens looking strangely out of place. Today Ushuaia is the supply centre for the whole of the Antarctic region.
The name Cape Horn sends shudders in the minds of seafaring folks. In fact it is a tiny island at the very tip of South America, a manned Chilean outpost with a lighthouse. The Dutch navigator Willem Cornelis Schouten, the first European to sail around the Cape (1616), named it after his birthplace, Hoorn, Netherlands. Such is it reputation that later captains did their best to use the Magellan Channel in order to escape to the Pacific without visiting. Regal Princess in fact majestically rounded ”The Horn” just as the sun rose on a wonderful summer”s morning, the sea calm and the captain in fine form explaining details from the bridge. It is not always thus.
There is a perception that the FALKLAND ISLANDS are cold, wet and windy ” that may be true. A nasty little war between the Argentine and British in the depths of winter April ” June 1982 did nothing to disperse this view. However, Stanley the capital lies as far south of the equator as London does to the north. What is true is that the 700 islands that make up the archipelago sit out in the Atlantic 400 miles from the South American continent, and it does blow! There are a few trees and on a nice, warm summer”s day temperatures can get up into the low 80s. About 75 cruise ships have come into Stanley over the last 12 months bringing in over 50,000 tourists, all tender operations with only three lost due to weather, one of these still a subject for discussion. Stanley itself is a pretty village, with a population of just over 2,300. It does have a cathedral, Governors House, and a fine hospital. About another 700 people are spread around the islands, mainly involved with sheep farming and fishing.
And there is the RAF base and airfield, virtually self-sufficient and now thought to be the home of another 2,500 personnel at any one time. Getting to The Falklands is not easy. There is a weekly flight from Punta Arenas (and on to Santiago) plus a scheduled RAF service operated by a civilian contractor from Brize Norton. Real tourists are sparse in numbers, no more than 2,000 last year, virtually all of them interested in the magnificent wild life both land-based and water-borne. In season you can spot various species of penguins, occasionally fur seals, sea lions and elephant seals. Sport fishing for sea trout and the brown trout, is said to be excellent. With rising fuel prices offshore oil production is being looked at again. However the cost and availability of exploration rigs makes investigation far from easy. The South Atlantic is not a welcoming host.
The islands were first discovered by the British in the 16th Century and continually occupied as a Crown dependency since 1833, with the exception of the short conflict. Only smaller ships are able to stand off the town. The main anchorage, in what is known as Port William, is a pleasant 20 tender minute ride. Visitors are greeted at the jetty by a useful visitors centre (plus a pub of course) and the Islands have just acquired a London Routemaster bus for a tour around the little town. You will pass Thatcher Drive and the cathedral plus Government House, which is much prettier than the pictures show. Stanley Golf Club”s president is Sir Rex Hunt. There is a horse race course (of sorts) and various memorials, both to the 1982 conflict and the lesser-known affair of 1914 when a small German flotilla attacked Stanley and was quickly repulsed by the battlecruiser Invincible. A fascinating museum tells the tale and gives an insight to living on what was truly an outpost of the Empire 100 years ago. No satellite communications then! For many on the cruise this visit was the highlight of the holiday, the short six hour landing allowing for a four wheel drive to Sparrow Cove for the penguins, Bluff Cove, plus Argentinean wreckage from the war. In the summer the bleak moors look benign. Not so on a winter's day with more than 50 lbs of equipment on your back, and a possible adversary over the next hilltop. The soldiers had to be careful of the mines. Nowadays huge areas are marked Keep Off. After a pub lunch, paid for in sterling, take a walk through Stanley. Two little books ”The Historic Trial” and a ”Guide to Shopping and Eating Out" will tell you all you have to know. The ships” tours are fine, but expensive. One idea is to email ahead and fix a private welcome. Four in a Landrover works out far less and in our case the driver/guide was the retired director of civil aviation. Most interesting.
About halfway between Buenos Aires and Cape Horn on the Atlantic coast of Argentina is PUERTO MADRYN, at the head of an inland sea negotiated via a narrow entrance to the Gulfo Nuevo, the Valdes national parkland peninsular to the starboard. Passengers who took a day trip said that the poor roads made it an unsuitable short shore excursion. Puerto Madryn should be said with a Welsh accent. Named after Parry Madryn, the first in a series of Welsh settlers that came to this part of Patagonia between 1865 and 1914. Just 50 miles south is the remarkable village of Gaiman, where Welsh is still spoken and you can take a proper Welsh tea. Princess Diana did so on a visit. Here there is a monument to Christopher Columbus, said to be the first in the whole of South America, with inscriptions in Italian, Welsh, English and Spanish. The Bethel chapel sits in a leafy copse on the riverbank. You might arrive on a day when the local choir is practising, perhaps for the Eisteddfod. Close your eyes and you are in the valleys.
East of Port Madryn is Punta Loma, a provincial wild life reserve that encompasses a sea lion rookery amidst outcrops of glistening quartz and fossilised marine life. All sorts of animals inhabit the cliff tops, including armadillos, rheas, foxes, guanacos, skunks and maras. The Ecocentro Mar Patagonia with its library and art museum sits high on the cliff top nearby. Also close is the Estancia san Guillermo, a family owned ranch which has really gone into the tourist business. Lunch is absolutely delicious, lamb cooked on an open wood fire and followed by a sheep shearing demonstration where no participation is offered to an enthusiastic audience.
MONTEVIDEO was our final port before Buenos Aires, just four hours away across the River Plate by fast hydrofoil. It is 12 hours by cruise ship. Uruguay is sometimes called the Switzerland of South America lying as it does between Argentina and Brazil, a convenient haven in times of stress. Montevideo city itself sits on a peninsula and whilst clearly not as prosperous as Chile (and as we discovered, Buenos Aires) the streets are well tended, parks are landscaped and beautifully maintained and it is perfectly safe to walk from the ship, perhaps a mile to the centre of the metropolis. On the way out of the docks you will pass a memorial to the Graf Spey, the German pocket battleship and surface raider which was caught by three British light cruisers in December 1939, severely damaged and finally scuttled 20 miles out to sea. There is also a Holocaust memorial on the Rambla Gran Bretana, part of a long seafront drive, a prosperous area featuring a golf course and yacht marina.
Perhaps the best place to start any tour on a one-day visit is the municipal palace (Palazzio Municipal), a skyscraper that corners two of the city”s principal thoroughfares. We took a glass-fronted elevator to the observation deck, which had a restaurant above (very expensive by South American standards). There is a museum of art history and not far away a museum of the Gaucho, which deals with the history of these famous men and has excellent displays of their leather, silver work, weapons and tools. These were South American versions of their wild-west counterparts, making a rough, tough living, working on huge cattle ranches. The word Gaucho stems from the native word for ”orphan” and the term is accurate for they were solitary figures ruled by no one.
Montevideo is a bustling city, which is more hospitable than perceived and well worth a couple of day's visit if you are in Buenos Aires. However the Uruguayans are currently not speaking to the Argentineans in a local spat over a Finnish forestry contract and the National soccer team has not qualified for the World Cup. What makes it even more sad, is that the first ever World Cup took place in Uruguay in Montevideo in 1932”.
Next and final Stop for Regal Princess. Buenos Aires, a story in itself.
http://www.tourism.org.fk
http://www.ushuaia.com
http://www.patagonia-argentina.com/i/atlantica/puertomadryn/madryn.htm
http://www.visit-uruguay.com/montevideo.htm