Once passed the Golfo de Penas, at least we are in the channels : First Messier channel, wide, impressive and we are lucky to sail downwind. The anchorages in the caletas follow one another , always closer to the trees, moss and lichens, well sheltered when the wind is howling. We will pass too quickly in Puerto Eden, last refuge for the kawesqars, but the bad weather will not permit us to linger. There is only a few indian families here, the others are in Puerto Natales or Punta Arenas, they have not disappeared. Now the children celebrate Haloween…
For nearly 2 months we will live isolated in this nature which has not changed since 10 000 years. No roads, no houses, a few fishermen, wrecks, birds, dolphins, otters and sea lions. We think of those who came before us, we read again Slocum, we watch once more the movie “Feurland”, the german expedition of 1928, with Gunther Plüschow, Captain of his sailing boat and seaplane. They had met the last canoeros and you can see in their look that they know they are a condemned folk, living on borrowed time. We come too late, of course, but we keep the feeling to share the same environment, to drink at the same springs, to cut the same wood to keep us warm, to meet the same animals. We think of their nomade life, devoid of everything, in the cold, the wind and the rain when we come back to our warm stove.
We progrees slowly in the channels : Concepcion, Inocentes, Sarmiento, Magallanes, Cockburn, Brecknock….to end in the Beagle and its fantastics icefields. Here we will meet again the same scenery than in Alaska, the same alpine vegetation, but the condors have replaced the eagles. The Darwin Cordillera and the Romanche icefield fascinate us. In Caleta Beaulieu we will leave our track, perhaps one day will we come back ?
