After cruising west up the Strait of Magellan through a rainy, blustery morning, we turned north and entered the Reina Adelaida Archipelago early in the afternoon. We had not planned a stop here, but as we entered the maze of islands the sun suddenly burst through the clouds, shining on the patches of glacially polished rock amongst the low forest and encouraging us to linger for a while in this lovely, seldom visited place. Before long we had launched the Zodiacs and the kayaks and were exploring the details of tiny islands and narrow passages, looking up into the miniature forest of southern beech festooned with mosses and lichens, and down into the clear cold waters where sea jellies drifted through submarine forests of kelp.

After the kayakers had returned to the ship, Dennis and I donned our drysuits and scuba gear and slipped into the calm water with the underwater video camera, eager to record some of the beautiful marine life on tape so that we could share it with our guests later in the comfort of the lounge. Below the surface, diving a site that had almost certainly never been seen before by human eyes, we found rock walls dropping vertically to over one hundred feet and teeming with life of many kinds. Beautiful anemones waved their pink and orange tentacles in the light current, delicate nudibanchs grazed on the algae covered surface of the rocks and Sebastes rockfish, cousins of old friends from dives in California, hovered in the entrances of deep crevices. Much of the marine ecosystem here is based on the kelp forest, which provides both sustenance and shelter for many fish and invertebrates. We were enthralled as we swam among the large blades of the kelp, discovering one beautiful creature after another. Once, I turned over one of the blades to find a tiny kelp crab, itself camouflaged by a thick encrustation of algae, which rested on my glove for a moment before settling back down to the bottom.

Patagonia and the Chilean Fjords offer endless fascination, both on a grand scale and when explored in detail. The opportunity to dive in a remote site like this one, discovering an unknown landscape, delving into it and sharing it with all the members of our expedition, is for me one of the most exciting aspects of traveling aboard Lindblad Expeditions' vessels.