Puerto Chacabuco is the marine gateway for the Aisén region. And this has to be one of my all-time placename favs. Who doesn’t love to say Chacabuco!

It is also a delightful spot to visit, and we had a beautiful sunny day in the area. We arranged a tour with a local company (Puerto Chacabuco Tours) and, after anchoring in the fjord, tendered in and headed out with a few others from our ship.

Initially, I wasn’t clear why it was called the “Ice End” tour, but now I know it’s a play on the pronunciation of the nearby town Puerto Aysén. Because we left early, the temps were still in the low 40s, and fog had settled in the valleys for a very mystical appearance. Our first stop was the lovely Coipos Lagoon. It was nice to hear the distinctive call of the Chucao birds. The paths suffered from neglect, but the vista was pristine.

Nice to See Green

This is the most sparsely populated area of Chile, about the size of Tennessee, with just over 100,000 residents, most in the capital, Coyhaique. Puerto Chacabuco only has 1,200 residents. The region includes the Northern and Southern Patagonian Ice Fields (largest after Antarctica and Greenland), and we saw lush fields, wetlands, tall forests, lots of evergreens, and rugged, forested granite mountains. It’s an agricultural area, and there were plenty of cows, horses, sheep, hogs, and lots of big, fluffy dogs.

The privately owned Bahia Acantilada Park sits on a beautiful bay with a view of the Andes range. Park amenities left a lot to be desired, needing some serious maintenance. Back in Puerto Aysén,our driver literally stopped the van to chat with the mayor (everyone knows everyone here) and lodge a complaint about the faulty generator and lack of baño lights – lol.

We saw a number of rivers, including the well-known Rio Simpson, popular with fly fishermen, and Mañihuales. These and other rivers all flow into one another, ending up in the Pacific.

Falls & a Historic Bridge

A big attraction here is the Cascada la Virgen falls. I think everyone visiting the area was checking this out, and the small parking lot was jammed. At the shrine, there were copious flower arrangements and prayer donations. But as of this writing, I do not have a good explanation why this is considered a holy site.

My favorite stop of the day was a visit to the area’s oldest bridge, dating from just 1919. No longer passable by vehicles, it’s still (relatively) safe for pedestrians. Consistent with maintenance needs in the region, be prepared for missing boards, broken boards, unsecured boards, and unevenly spaced boards. In short, an accident waiting to happen. But I loved the middle-of-nowhere setting and beautiful river. Birds, including Ibis, were abundant.

Our captain has hoisted up the ship’s anchor 85 meters, and we are back sailing the fjords.