Dec. 12 - Pia Glacier!

Sunrise on Dec. 12 was at 4:48AM.
This day was mostly spent steaming along - well, let's check the map:

I made a BIG, but thin, circle around the location of our encounter, at 3AM, with the dreaded 'open ocean.' Our destination, later in the day, was Pia Glacier, a medium-sized, but actively moving glacier. In the morning after breakfast, we had a series of talks on glaciology and on some the indigenous tribes that lived in this area. One thing I learned about glaciers is that a glacier that looks white is composed of minimally compressed snow containing a lot of air, hence all light is reflected from the surface. A glacier that looks blue is composed of extremely compressed snow, so compressed that the small amount of air scatters light in blue, or very short, wavelengths. A glacier that looks clear contains minute amounts of air and light passes right through it.
Three of the indigenous tribes were called the Yámana, the Hausch, and the Selk'nam. The Yámana lived in the Cape Horn area and were a peaceable tribe. They hunted and fished, built and traveled in canoes and moved around a lot. We were told that they wore no clothing, except for a small loincloth, and the women regularly swam in the water and dived for mussels and clams! There was a lot of discussion about whether this was believable or not! Think about it - the waters around Cape Horn . . . 900 km from Antarctica . . . naked women diving into the water for food . . . ?!  Charles Darwin expressed amazement that they were always barefoot, even in the snow. The Hausch and Selk'nam lived inland on the main island of Tierra del Fuego and hunted guanacos. Both tribes were known to be fierce warriors.
After lunch we prepared for our third trip in the zodiacs, this time to see the Pia Glacier. We disembarked at the place on the map that has the number 3 in red, but it's kind of hard to see. It's just to the right of the words, "Glaciar Pia." This was a wonderful and exciting excursion.