Glacier Alley in Patagonia

What a wonderfully evocative title for an article! Down at the tip of South America, you will find the 150-mile-long strait known as the Beagle Channel, described by Charles Darwin during his adventures on the Beagle. Glacier Alley is a shorter section of the channel that showcases 5 tidewater glaciers, named after European countries.  These massive blue glaciers “flow” from the Darwin Icefield in Southern Patagonia. On the Viking Chilean Fjords and South America cruise, we were lucky to see most of these – not all unfortunately because I was a little slow to get out on deck and missed the first by about 5 minutes! In my defense, it was 6am! 

Clouds and rain seem to be a constant in this part of the world, although it was starting to clear just a little. I managed to arrive on deck just to see the Romanche glacier receding into the distance. If only the Captain would have turned back for a few minutes! This glacier has a lovely waterfall running down off the bottom edge (I think!), but it was already gone.

About 15 minutes later, we approached the next glacier – Francia or French. Incidentally, I think I have the names correct for these glaciers – it was surprisingly hard to find a simple map that shows them all in order!

As you can see, low clouds were still the order of the day! I’m sure the mountains behind the glacier are magnificent!

Coming up next, just 10 minutes later, was the Italia glacier:

And here is a close-up of that lower section as it falls down into the ocean:

By now, there were definite signs of a change in the weather. A quick stroll to the other side of the ship (the right side) showed the makings of a nice sunrise:

And back on the port side, the sun is really making its appearance for the first time in perhaps 5 days!

As we sailed on, we finally saw both a blue sky and another glacier – this time the Holanda glacier:

And another view of the mountains behind the glacier which appear to actually be in sunshine as we continued our cruise:

By now, we were starting to emerge from the narrow channel and there was a chance to look back at the mountains which still had some rain falling to produce a lovely rainbow over the scene:

And finally, a broader panorama of the ship’s wake and the rainbow as we left the glaciers behind to sail on towards Ushuaia.

This is one of a series of articles I am writing about the ports and interesting side trips on this cruise around the foot of South America. You can find the full set of articles here, and the next article in the series visits the Penguins on the Falkland Islands.