One of the great days of my life

This was one of the highlights of my life so far.

I am calling it Glacier day.

Today dawned a very very wet day, as we expected. It was very grey and misty with very low clouds. It was dead calm though which made for an amazing effect as the mist and cloud was stuck to the valleys and channels as we sailed through them. It was spectacular.

Today we got to see one of the most amazing things anyone can experience in their lives. A Magnificent glacier in full cry. The glacier in question is caled the Pia Glacier, and is one of the few glaciers that is still advancing. There are only a few left in the World that are advancing so it is an honour to see one. And we got close!

As we pulled into the fjord we started seeing small bits of ice floating by. This Glacier actually reaches the water still and is about 120m above the water. As we came in closer we could see it emerging out of the grey at the end of the fjord. It was breathtaking. Even as we were on the ship we could hear it exploding as parts of the face were falling (carving) off into the water with resounding huge BOOM as it hits the water. It was an unbelievable experience that gave me goosebumps, and still is as I write this.

We jumped in the zodiacs and headed right in through the icebergs to land beside the wall about 100m away from the face. The run in the zodiac was an experience in itself through the ice.

So we hotfooted it off the zodiac and made for the best vantage of the front wall of the Glacierand it did not disappoint. It was in rare form and was dropping some huge sections of the face into the water. This was unusual according to the guides, and they believed it had something to do with the very hot (25 degrees) weather the week before. To see something so huge and to realise that this is constant motion at its best is just mind blowing. Its huge. I mean really huge. I also have a video of it carving a large slice as well. The sound is huge but not done justice by the camera.

We spent about 2 hours around the glacier and just before we left had a scotch and coke with iceberg ice that we had fished out of the water as it is so pure. Best scotch and coke I have ever had! I fished out some ice on the way back from the zodiac and ate the whole thing. It was an amazing experience.

In the afternoon we sailed through Glacier alley which was 5 glaciers one after the other. The best was Italy which is the only one which still reaches the water and reaches 1200m from the water level and is 8km deep. 8km!!!! That is an incredible amount of ice. It really makes you realise what we are messing with if we are going to add all the ice we have to the sea levels. Seriously, if you live on the coast.... move!

It was an unbelievable day, we have thousands of photos of this day alone. So I wont add them all to flickr. I probably wont add a lot until we get to Santiago and I get access to the laptop as resizing these is a real bugger.