This morning we begin sailing through the channels of the Chilean Fjords on our way to Puerto Chacabuco.  The skies are pretty cloudy, but there are still some lovely views with the deep green tree lined hills on either side of the ship.

We get our first glimpse of snow-covered Andes peaks before 9am, along with some waterfalls cascading down the mountainsides in the distance.

The mountains and the waterfalls get closer and closer the further into the channels we sail. About 10am, the channel opens up and we begin to see other ship traffic as well as the first fish farms out beside the shoreline as we enter the port area. 

Arriving early to Chacabuco, even though we have nothing planned, we still head down to the tender platform as soon as possible to get on one of the first tenders. On our previous visit here, we took the local bus up into the Andes to Coyhaique (where most of the tours are going today) so we decided we’d just wander around Chacabuco have lunch and make hike a little up the road. 

There is literally nothing here – seriously only 2 restaurants we could find in town – lots of houses and a resort, but not much else. Made for a perfect day for us to just wander. We headed to the restaurants first, one of which wasn’t even open!  Restaurante Y Cocinera, the other restaurant, was in fact open (earlier than we expected)  and was actually our first choice anyway.  We plopped ourselves down at a table for two and ordered a yummy meal of fried Merluza, cheese empanada and a mixed seafood empanada accompanied by this great fry bread (I could make myself sick on that stuff it was so good it was hard to stop eating it!).  Excellent, and to make it even better, they even had their very own beer, brewed right there.  Perfect!

And even more entertaining was watching out the window as all the ship people who did no research and had no plans, wander around looking lost wondering why they are here! Ed kept saying, “Oh, this is fun!” LOL.

Entertainment and meal over, now it is time to walk off our lunch!  AllTrails had a long hike (6 miles or something) that went out through the mountains – but that was a bit long for us for a short port call, plus it was all on the main road – which was not the most conducive to safe walking, let me tell you!  And how do we know? Well, of course, we had to try a part of the walk – so we had to try to navigate along the side of a very busy 2 lane highway coming into town.  Yeah, not the most comfortable walking – but the views were awesome out along a short little arm of the channel that forms a bay!

About 20 minutes from town, we decided to turn back – it was getting decidedly more walker unfriendly – and we figured we’d rather not risk our lives for a hike along a highway.  So we meandered back into town, wandering up to a lookout point for views across the bay and out toward our ship.

Then we circled back into town, wandering through the craft market which was just sort of meh.  The ship had these shuttles that said Town Center on them, which made us laugh, because they literally drove you 2 minutes up the road to the big Parque los Artesanos – which had a little botanical garden along with an amphitheater and some walking paths – but was just a park nonetheless. 

Let the complaining begin!  We were happy – and quite content with heading back to the ship early to spend the rest of the afternoon on the balcony staring at the Andes across the water.

Normal evening schedule with the addition of the comedian for a second performance. He’s good in a dad-joke sort of way, but his best asset, in our opinion, is his ability to do impersonations.  He performed a darn near flawless Paul McCartney, John Denver and Rod Stewart.  Plus he can make all these noises with his mouth that sound just like percussion instruments – and even a whole band. 

The comedian is followed by nightcaps on the balcony as we leave Puerto Chacabuco for 2 days of scenic Chilean Fjords sailing.