There are landings on the Expedition cruise there is no docking. The Zodiac raft takes you from the Ship which is anchored some 200 meters from the landing spot. There is obvious excitement about getting on land and knowing how the landing is going to look in the briefing a day earlier. Then there is the other sort of briefing. Lectures on the land itself. Sometimes it is easy to skip them and to just enjoy a drink or a book in the lounge bar. It is only when you sit through one of the lectures that you truly begin to relate what you see around. The same expedition team that helps you with the on land hikes talks about the land in the lectures.
Although most of the lectures are of nature, what I like about this one is that people and civilizations often make an interesting topic to talk about. In Patagonia, there is a constant reminder of how the early settlers who braved the seas and the harsh weather couldn’t really put up a fight with their fellow human beings from Europe. The colonists, like they did with other places in the world, tried to convert or desimate the local population here too. Some tribes and languages have completely gone extinct and the only surviving pure-blooded ‘Yamana tribe’ lady is in her mid-eighties.
I remember a friend of mine who lives near a jungle in India, saying “I only fear humans”.
To travel in these lands and to notice that so little has changed over the last couple of thousand years in terms of human direct influence, it feels reassuring. It is nice to know that maybe humans will never be able to do anything here, a land so wild that it only gets affected by what we do around the world. Glaciers melt and oceans rise, but I am glad that Patagonia will remain Patagonia for at least some of our future generations to see.
The lectures help and are as interesting as the landings.
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| The barman!! after the hikes and the lectures |
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