Laguna San Rafael is a lake formed by the San Rafael Glacier, one of the many wonderful glaciers of Patagonian ice field. This was a place that I had read was fairly inaccessible and not seen by anywhere near as many people as somewhere like the Perito Moreno Glacier in Argentina. This was precisely the reason I was determined I was going to see this glacier from the massive ice field that was part of San Rafael National Park in Northern Patagonia on the Chilean coast, right next to the Pacific Ocean.
It had not been easy to arrange in advance. Nothing about Northern Patagonia was easy to arrange in advance. Once you got here, everything was easily available to do, but finding information to make a reservation outside of Chile was incredibly difficult.
I actually would have been able to go to Laguna San Rafael from Puerto Tranquilo, had I been able to get up to date information from the internet. You can access Laguna San Rafael National Park from Puerto Tranquilo. But I wasn’t able to find this information in advance, so instead I booked through Hotel Loberias del Sur in Puerto Chacabuco which was on the internet, but it meant I had to send a reservation by post from Riga, as I was working in Latvia at the time. If I’d turned up on the day at the hotel, I would have got on the trip. So there had been no need to panic. I had been told back in October that the trips often got fully booked, but I suspect you’d have to be unlucky to turn up on the day and find there was no space. If you wanted to make extra sure, I think booking the day before would generally guarantee you a place.
Puerto Chacabuco is near Puerto Aysen, much further north on the Carretera Austral than Puerto Tranquilo. I was going to have to head back that way in any case, but it was a detour off the main road. It would also mean spending a much longer time on a boat to get to the glacier than I would have from the Valley of the Explorers which was a very short hop in comparison.
However, I did get to see a different part of Northern Patagonia, I stayed in a wonderful log cabin in the middle of nowhere and the boat trip turned out to be a brilliant day.
The boat was only about two thirds full, which meant there was plenty of space. There were 6 seats to a table, I got a window seat and my table was shared by a couple from Israel and a bloke from Switzerland. The couple had hired a car and were driving the Carretera Austral. They had started in Puerto Montt and taken the two ferries to get here. They were driving back through Argentina. The Swiss bloke was touring around on his motorbike and had had his own motorbike shipped over from Switzerland for the journey.
We set off for the Laguna San Rafael from Puerto Chacabuco at just after 8 o’clock in the morning. It was 125 miles to reach there by boat and this was going to take at least 4 hours. We were weaving through inlets to reach this massive ice field in Laguna San Rafael National Park and it was slow progress. However, since this was quite an expensive thing to do, over £200 for the day, the food and drink was all included.
We started off by having breakfast and enjoying the scenery as we sailed and I got to know the passengers who were sitting at the table with me. Thankfully they all spoke English. The Chilean people were generally sitting together. There only seemed to be a few people on the boat trip today who weren’t from either Chile or Argentina, including a family from Colorado who I got chatting to later.
The excursion staff spoke both Spanish and English and gave us information about the Patagonian ice field and glaciers. I chatted to my fellow travellers a little more and we talked about our experiences of driving along the Carretera Austral. And it was actually quite nice to have a day off driving.
As a pre-lunch aperitif, the staff came round with glasses of Pisco Sour for everyone. Pisco Sour is something everyone drinks if they come on holiday to Chile. It’s the law. There’s a debate about whether pisco, a type of brandy, originated in Peru or Chile and where the cocktail comes from. I’ve never been to Peru, but I’ve been to Chile twice, so I’m fiercely loyal to Chilean pisco and their version of the Pisco Sour. We had lunch to soak up the alcohol as we got closer to the glaciers.
On many excursions to glaciers, including the other ones I did in Chile and Argentina on this trip, as well as those I’ve done in Alaska, you stay in the main boat to see the glacier and it gets as close as is safe to do so. But this trip was more of an adventure. Instead of staying on this relatively large boat to get as close as possible to the glacier, we were going in zodiacs!
Our boat anchored and we were called to the boarding point to get into the zodiacs. We got kitted out in our life jackets and then, in turn, we were called into the zodiacs. I had zipped around in zodiacs quite a lot when I went to Antarctica, as these inflatable boats were the preferred modes of transport to do landings around the Antarctic peninsula, but I hadn’t been in one since. And now I was going on an adventure around the icebergs and glaciers in an inflatable boat in Patagonia. How exciting!
I got into the zodiac and sat next to my new Swiss friend and we headed out into the lake towards the glacier for a closer view. Laguna San Rafael is a lagoon formed by the retreat of the San Rafael Glacier and the calving and melting of this glacier means that the lagoon is filled with icebergs, the pieces of ice that have broken off from the edge of the glacier. You get a real sense of the size of these icebergs when your only protection from them is an inflatable dinghy. They are enormous! Being in a zodiac meant that we could weave in and out of the icebergs much more than a normal boat could do, so we could get relatively close to them. It was amazing to be able to see the icebergs from the zodiac as we moved past them and closer to the San Rafael Glacier.
It’s difficult to tell how close you are to the glacier from the perspective of the boat or if we were closer to the glacier in the zodiac than I had been when I’d been in normal boats, but you certainly get more of a feeling of the danger when you’re in an inflatable dinghy that could easily be overturned by a massive upsurge caused by a huge segment calving off the edge of the glacier.
Even in the middle of January, the height of the Patagonian summer, this sheltered lagoon of glacial water was freezing cold. The icebergs were not melting like a snowman in the midday winter sun. The temperature meant that the icebergs were diminishing at an extremely lethargic pace. So if an enormous chunk of ice fell off the toe of the glacier and into the lagoon, it would cause an immense wave that could flip our zodiac if we were too close to the glacier. And if that happened, then we would all fall into the icy lagoon. We had our life jackets, so we wouldn’t drown, but the water temperature would be a recipe for hypothermia rapidly setting in and death in a matter of minutes. So it wasn’t a good idea to get too close to the glacier in a boat of any description, never mind a small, inflatable one.
The glacier looked gigantic in front of us and it didn’t look like it was very far away, but I never felt like we were close enough to it to be in any real danger. Tourist trips by boat to Laguna San Rafael were done fairly frequently. The crew should know what they were doing.
After spending plenty of time weaving through the large icebergs and smaller chunks of ice that floated on the lagoon and getting as close as we dared to the edge of Glaciar San Rafael, with ample opportunity to take lots of photos, the zodiac steered back towards the big boat.
The zodiacs didn’t take all of the passengers out to the glacier at the same time, so after our group was back on board the main boat, we could watch as our zodiac took another group out for a closer view of the glacier. From this viewpoint you really could see how tiny the zodiac was in comparison to the glacier and surrounding icebergs. I enjoyed watching the zodiacs heading out towards the glacier, momentarily disappearing behind large icebergs and then magically reappearing. This was a truly enchanting place to be in the world.
Once everyone was back on board it was time to make the long journey back to Puerto Chacabuco. I was expecting it to be quite dull, but actually it was a brilliant trip back.
The crew announced that for our entertainment on the way back, we were the entertainment, it was karaoke time! I groaned, what was this, a booze cruise in Ibiza? The crew came round and served us a glass of whisky cooled with ice collected from one of the icebergs on the lagoon. The Swiss man and the couple from Israel, who appeared to be as impressed as I was at the prospect of a load of tourists singing out of tune for several hours, probably in a foreign language, disappeared onto the lower deck of the boat soon after that. I had another glass and settled back to relax and listen to the karaoke. I would retreat to the lower deck as well if things got too ghastly.
As I predicted, since most of the passengers on the boat were Chilean we had a lot of passengers volunteering for karaoke and singing songs in Spanish that were evidently beloved in Chile, but unknown everywhere else in the world. It seemed to be the same few passengers who were doing the karaoke, which is fairly typical in my experience. It was an open, free bar, so I took advantage and sampled a couple of different types of Pisco and also some tequila, which were all very good quality.
It might have been the fact that I was on a high after the zodiac to the glacier or I was emboldened by the strong booze, but I decided I was going to have a go at the karaoke and I went up to the staff who had a laptop with thousands of songs to choose from. I didn’t know any Chilean songs, I wasn’t able to sing in Spanish and I also thought it was about time for Europe to be represented, so I requested Mamma Mia by Abba, probably the most European of all bands. Thankfully as Abba was a world famous pop band in the 70s and 80s, followed by the success of Mamma Mia on the stage and big screen, my fellow travellers from South America knew the song. I had fun singing it and having a bit of a dance on deck. I do love to sing and dance. I’m not bad at both singing and dancing, but I wouldn’t win any competitions in them either.
After my initial song, which had generally gone down well because I’d sung a recognisable song and managed to carry a tune, there were more Chilean classics sung by the locals and when there was another gap, I decided that it was time for England to be represented and which better band to represent the English than the most successful band of all time? I chose my favourite Beatles song, All My Loving which had the added bonus of being short and without lots of key changes. I even managed to do the high bit at the end! The booze had definitely emboldened me to do that!
One of the women from the family from Colorado on the boat had obviously decided I had a good voice and asked me to sing with her.
My two rules of karaoke are, make sure you know the song really well and could sing it without the lyrics if necessary and make sure it’s a song you can actually sing. I once did a very drunken rendition of “Take Me Home Country Roads” in a pub in Torquay, a song I love and know backwards, but which wasn’t in my key and sounded appalling! That was fine in the car when no one was listening to me, it was not fine in a pub full of people.
The woman from Colorado had requested the Gershwin classic “Summertime” originally recorded by Ella Fitzgerald. If ever there was a definition of punching above your weight, me trying to sing an Ella Fitzgerald song was it. This song broke both of my karaoke rules, it’s a song I don’t know particularly well and it was a complicated melody with some very low notes that anyone who isn’t a professional singer would struggle with. I didn’t get beyond the first few lines before I’d given up. In order to prove that I could sing, I just didn’t have the vocal capability to perform an operatic aria, I did one more song on my own. “Top of the World” by the Carpenters is a particular favourite of mine to sing at karaoke, so I knew I could make a half decent job of that one!
After all this karaoke, time had flown by and we were getting closer to Puerto Chacabuco. I sat down as tea was served and the other members of my table returned for our final approach into the town. We got back to Puerto Chacabuco at around 7pm. It had been a full day out.
The cruise from Puerto Chacabuco to the San Rafael Glacier had been very enjoyable and had exceeded my expectations. The main feature that put it well above all of the other glacier excursions I did, was the fact that we went out to the glacier by zodiac. That made it a unique and special experience. In addition, the long journey sailing through the inlets to reach the glacier meant that I had had time to get to know some of my fellow passengers. It was a leisurely day that gave me a rest from driving and a chance to relax. And the karaoke wasn’t half bad either!
I travelled to Laguna San Rafael during my time driving on the Carretera Austral in January 2020.
I booked my all day trip to Laguna San Rafael with Hotel Loberias del Sur in Puerto Chacabuco. The 12 hour excursion including trip to the lagoon by boat, close up excursion to the glacier by zodiac, all meals and alcohol drinks, cost around £225. It is also possible to stay at overnight in the hotel.
Puerto Chacabuco is approximately 20 minutes drive from the major settlement of Puerto Aisen. To reach Puerto Aisen turn onto Road 240 from the Carretera Austral, just north of Coyhaique. It will take approximately an hour to drive the 64km to Puerto Aisen.
I stayed at Cabanas Ecoturismo la Pancha 7km outside of Puerto Aisen. A 3 bedroom cabin costs approximately £78 per night. The hotel is also on various hotel booking websites. I booked through booking.com.
I booked my pick up truck with Keddy by Europcar through an intermediary in the UK. It cost me approximately £52 per day for a 4WD 4 door pick up truck.
To access the Carretera Austral, I flew to Balmaceda Airport from Puerto Montt with Latam which cost £54 return. Checked luggage and seat reservation are extra.
Further information about driving the Carretera Austral can be found in my post
Driving the Carretera Austral – My Tips
Read about my other adventures on the Carretera Austral
Driving South on the Carretera Austral
Read the three part series about my hike on the W Trek in Torres del Paine
The Lazy Writer’s W Trek – Days 1 & 2
The Lazy Writer’s W Trek – Days 3 & 4
The Lazy Writer’s W Trek – Day 5 & Glacier Grey
Read about my other adventures in Chile