On the first of December, we boarded the MV Fram and set off down the Beagle Channel. There’s a fair bit of shipping on this route going to Ushuia and the Chilean naval base at Puerto Williams, set against a background of atmospheric clouds and the end of the Andes.
The ship is a good size, with seven decks and around 250 passengers; this makes it quite stable in rough seas (though we had good weather all through the trip), and with space (physical and social!) to spread out in.
The largest group of the passengers were British (David Attenborough factor?), followed by the usual West European and North American suspects. There were also about 30 Chinese people on this trip (mostly Hong Kongers). For some reason this was the only sign on the ship which was in Chinese as well as English:
Our cabin came with a porthole:
And TV with an airline-style entertainment system, which we usually used to keep tabs on our progress:
As well as the passengers, there were about 80 crew of various types. The expedition team, who also looked after us when we landed (mainly fending off fur seals), gave lectures on the sea days (seven days sailing between the various destinations), which mostly dealt with the wildlife and history of the places where we landed. They were all well attended, but the star performer was Steffen Biersack, who managed to keep everyone entertained on the subject of rocks.
We saw very little of the actual sailors, but we did get to visit the bridge to inspect the equipment and interrogate the captain; everyone’s main concern was “How do you spot the icebergs?” The last, multi-talented group, who did the cooking, cleaning, and drove the little boats which we used for landings, were almost all Filipino, and managed to keep smiling despite very long days. Vegetarian food was hit and miss (probably not a priority with Hurtigruten’s target market), but the range of puddings made up for that.
