After the sunny, calm day yesterday, today’s weather was a bit closer again to Patagonian reality: wind and rain, a lot of both. An hour was long enough to stretch legs in the morning. Beach, woodland, wetland, hill, wind-beaten trees, view of Caleta.
Brazo Noroeste means northwestern arm, and that’s exactly what it is: the northwestern arm of the Beagle Channel, which is splitting up into two branches at this points. The mountains to both sides of Brazo Noroeste are rounded by mighty glaciations of the past. Today’s inland ice of the Cordillera Darwin, which is where we are now, still sends some streams of ice down to the water. Views were limited due to rain and low clouds, but still, great scenery. The weather is just normal life in Patagonia. Or, rather, Tierra del Fuego. Patagonia starts north of the Strait of Magellan.
We dropped anchor in the Caleta Beaulieu in the later afternoon behind a peninsula with rocky hill, covered with dense woodland which was giving us shelter from the wind. It was pouring rain, but that did not keep us from exploring the area a little bit, so we made a hike up the mountain – and felt like Indiana Jones at work. The forest was so dense that it was difficult to get through. Water everywhere, from all directions. Lovely! You just have to drop the idea that nature is only beautiful under a blue sky. That is not the case. It is always beautiful.