Cruising the Chilean fiords

You know that it's going to be a rocky ride when the seasick bags come out!
The staff put these bags all over the ship because they knew that we were going to hit some rough waters. For the last two days, we have been sailing southward through the Chilean fiords. All was calm when we were on the inside passage, but occasionally, we had to come out into the Pacific Ocean and man did those waves kick up. Normally, the waves are less than 5 feet, but as luck would have it, we hit the tail end of a storm and the waves were about 20 feet high. Add in rain and strong winds and it was like sailing through a hurricane! I can tell you that I got no sleep on those two nights.

So why did we go through all of this trouble?
To reach the Amalia glacier.
To navigate through these waters, we have an ice pilot onboard (who happens to come from Kingston, Ontario). He got the ship to within 6000 feet of the glacier. Below you can see a closeup of the glacier.
The ice on the glacier is actually blue in color and we watched chunks of it fall off into the water. The landscape around the glacier is interesting and the waters are teeming with wildlife. Since we were in calm waters during the day, I spent most of my time trying to get some sleep. When I got up, I heard that some passengers saw seals, dolphins and a couple of whales.

An ice pilot is needed in these waters because some parts of the fiords are very deep while others are very shallow. Because the fiords are very narrow, the difference between the deep side and the shallow side can be as little as 50 feet. When you are on a huge ship like ours, that makes a big difference. Markers and buoys are placed on the shallow sections, but if you don't pay attention (or have a bad ice pilot), then tragedy can strike. As we were sailing along, we passed the wreck of one passenger ship that didn't make it through the fiords.