Chilean chill-out

I find the remaining passengers up on deck, clinging to the rails, as our catamaran cuts its way through the waters surrounding the natural ice sculptures in front of San Rafael Glacier. Heavily armed with cameras, most are busy trying to capture memories, while those without a lens struggle to find the right superlatives to best describe the experience. For the most part, however, despite the occasional "Wow!" there is a glorious silence, as we all stand gazing in awed reverence of the sapphire beauty of a mile-wide glacier.

San Rafael Glacier, the centrepiece of a national park of the same name, is part of an ice field created by ice and snow tumbling down Mount San Valentin, which towers more than 4,000 metres above the lagoon. The glacier was first seen by Europeans some 400 years ago, though at the rate it is now crumbling, it will likely vanish from sight within the next 200 years. The ice field extends well inland from the lagoon into an area virtually inaccessible except by foot across rugged terrain. On maps of the region, the ice appears to cover about 100 kilometres from north to south and roughly half that from east to west. What we are gazing upon is a section roughly 2,200 metres wide, which forms an icy path between mountain peaks, rising 70 metres above the water and down more than 225 metres into the lagoon.