tour boat
While staying in San Antonio, Chile for a couple days before embarking on a cruise to Antarctica on Holland America Oosterdam, we took a harbor tour available on the spot at a dock along the waterfront promenade. After walking down the stairway leading to the dock we found a couple men sitting on a bench who take the money for the cruise. Like the majority of the people in San Antonio, neither of them spoke English. John and I each know a few words in Spanish. Not enough for a conversation, but enough to manage a transaction, though for that it probably wouldn’t even matter since both sides know what the other wants and they were sitting under a sign with the price of 4000 pesos, which was about $4 USD per person at the time, though it would now take nearly $4.50 USD to equal 4000 Chilean pesos.
buoy in the harbor
They have a whole fleet of little boats that run the harbor tours. Some are very small and open with no shelter at all, while some are bigger and have a canvas cover over most of the seats. Others are somewhere in between.
double deck tour boat
We even saw one double deck boat. After paying they direct you into whatever boat is sitting at the loading spot at the time. The one for our tour happened to be one of the bigger single deck boats. There were a few people on it, but not many. As we boarded a young lady handed us life jackets and said something in Spanish. Probably telling us to put them on. All of the life jackets said Pamela on them, so that was most likely the name of the boat.
waiting for the boat to fill
Most of the people already on board were on the port side and the seats there were pretty much full. There was nobody on the starboard side. A family of 4 just ahead of us were getting into the middle seats, but one of them stood in the aisle for a very long time and wouldn’t move until we finally asked if we could get by. I don’t think she even realized we were there. She had a cute tiny little dog. There was a bigger dog along on the ride too so apparently they are allowed. When we could finally walk down the aisle we went to the back where we could have a view from the back of the ship as well as the side. At first the ship listed to port, but as it sat there for awhile while more people came to take a tour the starboard side eventually filled and the boat straightened out as the weight evened up.
sea lions on the beach and a grain ship unloading
For awhile there was a large school of tiny fish between the boat we were on and the one tied up next to it. Eventually the boats drifted together and the next time there was space between them all of the baby fish were gone.
captain
It took awhile for enough people to wander down to fill the boat enough to start the tour. Once both rows of outside seats were full the captain boarded without waiting for the whole inside row to fill as well. The girl who handed out life jackets came around with a camera and took pictures of everyone. As best we could figure out they needed to have a photo of everyone on board for liability reasons or something. Her phone translation said required for registration. Buying the photo after the tour was optional.
small container ship with small cranes
Once the tour got underway she put the camera down and picked up a megaphone instead. She had a running commentary throughout the tour, but since it was all in Spanish we don’t actually know what she said.
fishing from a fishing boat at anchor
It was a bit of an unusual boat tour. Usually they go to scenic sights or looking for wildlife. This one meandered through the harbor, I assume talking about the different ships we passed. First we went by fishing boats at anchor, one of which people were fishing off of right there in the harbor while it was anchored up – and catching fish too.
big container ship with big cranes
The boat went around to all of the different docks so I assume the commentary was about whatever ship happened to be there and how the loading and unloading works for that particular dock and type of ship.
car carrier
One was a car carrier with sides much higher than any of the container ships. Trucks loaded with cars would periodically drive down the dock away from that one, but since we were not on the side by the dock we didn’t see them unload though I would guess they probably just drive them off the ship and onto the truck. That ship did not have any cranes on or near it.
hotel we stayed in from the tour boat
The next ship back had its own cranes onboard, but no visible containers or anything. If it had anything left on it to unload it must have been inside the hold. The captain seemed to indicate that was the spot where the Oosterdam would be the next day so if there was any more loading or unloading to do they would have to finish it up before then. The process seemed to take quite awhile since all of the ships we saw stayed at least overnight if not longer. We could see a lot of the slips where ships were from our hotel room, but unfortunately not the one where the cruise ship docked. We had been hoping the Oosterdam would dock where we could see it from the hotel.
giant cranes
There were 4 enormous cranes between two berths with ships, but no ship at the cranes. On the other side of that little inlet there were some container ships. The smaller one had smaller cranes unloading it and the bigger one had some of the giant ones. At the time we passed by those cranes were pulling things up out of the hold from below decks near the middle of the ship while the outer ends still had containers piled high above the surface.
sea lion on top of the pedestal bit below the hull
We passed by the back end of a partially unloaded ship that had a sea lion and some birds sitting way up high on some sort of structure hanging below the hull of the ship. While the birds could easily fly in and out of there, we figured the sea lion must have gotten up there before they started unloading the ship when it sat lower in the water and would now have a very long drop to get down unless that ship was loaded up again before it left port.
tetrapods
A lot of the edges of the harbor had tetrapods, which are t-shaped concrete blocks piled up along the shoreline. These are used to prevent erosion and protect structures – like the docks they are placed around. The end of the outermost dock had some larger concrete blocks, which made a nice resting place for sea lions. Seagulls and sea lions were the only wildlife we saw on that tour. We also could see them from our hotel room. Sea lions liked the beach near there except when dogs chased them off, and seagulls were everywhere.
sea lion
On the way back to the dock we saw some more sea lions in the rocks at the end of another dock. It was a pretty short tour, but then again it was also really cheap. Most people did leave a tip at the end.
little mermaid tour boat
Many of the tour boats looked a bit worse for wear. As we were disembarking one pulled in next to us that was about the same size as ours, but painted up all fancy with characters from the Little Mermaid.
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