A ferry company called Navimag has a long distance boat trip weekly from the Southern port town of Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt, Chile. The route weaves in an out of the fjords, islands, and tiny channels and waterways of the southern part of Chile. It's a three day ride through the most wild and untouched part of Patagonia. There are few small fishing villages of only a hundred or so people in the area, other than that it is entirely undeveloped. My friends and I were unsure intially if we could take the trip as the main boat in their fleet crashed into an island. Luckily for us, they were able to replace it with a smaller boat and still make the voyage. The scenery throughout everyday was stunning, there were no roads, no phone lines, no people. Just mountains and water, islands, waterfalls and the occasional seal, dolphin or whale.
It ended up being a four day trip instead of three because one of the engines broke and they had to specially fly in two technicions to some backwater port in order to get them on the boat to repair the engine.
We didn't hit anything, it just broke. It was still a great trip, interesting people on the boat, pretty good food and almost enough booze to go around to help ease the progress of time. Our final night we had bingo and then turned the dining area into a dance club. It was a lot more fun with the dip and pitch of the boat on the waves.
We finally arrived at our destination, a full 24 hours late with a long list of passengers with missed connections. I believe this may be some sort of record for South America as they usually only average about 1-4 hours late and never early or on time. It's a good thing I don't make travel plans for any more than 20 minutes in the future or I may haved missed something as well.
