Chile - earthquake capital of the world?

Chile (along with the other west coast South American countries) lies right on the edge of the South American Tectonic Plate, which is colliding with the Nazca Plate at a rate of 70mm each year. Add to that the Antarctic Plate smashing into southern Chile at 20mm per year, and it's not at all surprising that Chile experiences a lot more and often much bigger earthquakes than most other parts of the world.

Southern Chile, as can be seen on the above map (from https://walrus.wr.usgs.gov/earthquakes/sopac.html) also lies on the junction of these three major tectonic plates mentioned above. This map shows the complex geology here:

As recently as Christmas Day 2016, Chiloe Island was hit by a massive 7·6 Richter earthquake which although it caused damage, mercifully claimed no lives:

From (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/25/tsunami-warning-aftermagnitude-77-earthquake-strikes-southern/).

On the 22nd May 1960, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded (source Wikipedia) struck Chile at a recorded strength of about 9·5 Richter. As well as significant local damage in Chile, a massive tsunami travelled around the Pacific with an 82 ft wave devastating the Chilean coast and locations as far away as New Zealand, Australia and Japan all suffering damage:

(from https://infogr.am/the-great-chilean-earthquake)
and there's a particularly good animation of the spread of the tsunami here on youtube. Note the coastlines highlighted in red as the tsunami strikes, there are quite a lot of them.

In 2014 there were seven earthquakes of magnitude 7·0 or greater! So, it looks quite likely that while in Chile, we might experience an earthquake or two!

What we like about Black Watch

As cruise ships go, Black Watch is quite small, just 804 passengers (and 330 crew) at maximum normal occupancy. As such it doesn't have dozens of restaurants, big cinemas, climbing walls, etc as the massive 5,000 passenger ships from other cruise lines have, but it's all the nicer for that as far as we're concerned.

The lounge on Black Watch.

Being that bit smaller though,  Black Watch can moor in smaller ports and go places where the larger cruise ships simply cannot. A particularly good example is from our 2012 cruise on Black Watch to Norway. A surprise extra, which was only announced as we approached it, was an evening venture into the Troll Fjord.

Troll Fjord is a very narrow fjord near Narvik which looks on a map rather like the shape of a wooden spoon. It's a 2½ kilometre dead end and any large ship entering has to be absolutely confident that it can be turned around at the end.

Entering Troll Fjord:

Before entering the fjord, a lifeboat had been lowered to go ahead of Black Watch to video our dramatic entrance (well worth watching this 60 second excerpt).

Rock walls almost within touching range: 

Cliffs towering over the ship:

Reaching the dead end:

Reaching the 'bowl' of the spoon, it didn't look anywhere near big enough for Black Watch, but the competent crew neatly turned the 205½ metre (674 feet) long ship within its own length, and still left room for the lifeboat to stand off and video everything.

Heading out of the fjord:

It looked even narrower going out, but by that time everyone was very confident that the crew knew exactly what they were doing. A spontaneous round of applause broke out on our exit from the fjord. I think that the vast majority of the 800 passengers had been up on deck to see this venture and were undoubtedly as impressed as I was at this feat of navigation. 

In the beginning .....

I blame Barbara!

She read a Fred Olsen promotional email and asked "why don't we see if they've got any cabins left for this cruise?"

I had to admit that the price was very attractive, so a call to Fred established that a nice sounding cabin was still available at a silly price, and we knew from our 2012 cruise to Norway on the same ship, the Black Watch, that we were comfortable with the relatively small size of the ship (800 passengers).

But we also knew that we had to make a very quick decision if we were to get a cabin at such short notice and at such a good price.

A very urgent email to (youngest son) Eddy to ask if he would be available if we turned up on his doorstep in Santiago in a few weeks time, was rewarded with a quick and positive response.

So I phoned Fred again and committed us to going.

The route we'll be taking is the first quarter or so of Black Watch's 2017 round-the-world cruise. From Southampton in early January we'll cross the Bay of Biscay (should be "interesting" at this time of the year) to Madeira for a day's sightseeing in Funchal.

Then the long haul across the Atlantic to Barbados where we'll stop and say hello to Barbara's sister Mary (and John of course). Further stops in the Caribbean will include Bonaire and Aruba before we get to the newly enlarged Panama Canal (tick this off my bucket list ☺).

Once we've crossed America and entered the Pacific, we'll cross the Equator before stopping in Ecuador for a day then it's on to Lima (port of Callao) in Peru.

Leaving Black Watch there, we'll fly down to Santiago and enjoy two weeks or so with Eddy, Sara & Clemente before flying via Rome to Heathrow.

That's the plan anyway!