Puerto Eden & Seno Iceberg

Wednesday, April 15
Position: 48,43S 74,00W

Whoops! Been about a week since our last post. We've had some gorgeous weather for sailing, some really beautiful anchorages with hiking around, and made it to our first inhabited anchorage on Monday – Puerto Eden! A sparsely populated (maybe about 100 people) fishing village, Puerto Eden represents the only inhabited place between the northern channels and Puerto Williams. It was apparently established in the 60's in an attempt to "revive" a local indigenous population. As far as I understand, this did not work very well and while some people are descendants of the original indigenous population, the traditional culture and language are severely endangered. A dictionary/grammar was made in the 90's (I think), but, (likely due its isolation), no recent work has been done ethnographically or linguistically. This is unfortunate due to the rapid decrease in population and the passing of the elder generation who I assume are the last with any knowledge of local heritage. I think it would be a challenging but rewarding place to work as a linguist. Anyone out there in need of a research topic?
The village is a stretch of houses along one cove, connected by boardwalks – there are no cars or sidewalks. There is a large military presence (Matt and I didn't see these guys doing much and we aren't sure why there are so many of them there) and a large school building. Other than that We had hopes of an internet connection but these were squelched as the wifi was out during our visit. Oh well, I'm actually kind of glad I don't have to acknowledge the real world just yet...
It was nice seeing other people and making conversation (as best we could), plus we got to take REAL showers (a really awesome thing) and picked up several pounds of crab already shucked for us by a local fisherman. Due to our lack of refrigerator, we have been eating crab for every meal since. Things could be worse.

We had beautiful weather today (sunshine and not a cloud in the sky!), so we took a small detour to Seno Iceberg, an amazing inlet up to a glacier face that descends drastically from the mountains into the ocean. The entire way up to the glacier is impressive. The inlet is a milky greenish color that almost reminds me of Tahiti until I remember I am wearing 5 layers of clothing and am STILL cold. The glacier itself is this piercing sort of florescent ice blue.

It looks like we may have a good window to sail around Golfo de Penas this weekend, and then we will go off in search of hot springs and more villages. Golfo de Penas is our last sketchy spot and the only all-nighter we will do on this trip.

In the meantime, image us eating homemade crab cakes anchored in front of a glacier, drinking a Patagonian red. :)