Viking Polaris Chilean Fjords Review: A Relaxed 13-Day Patagonia Cruise
We had an opportunity to go on another Viking cruise last fall and after exploring a number of options, we decided to go back to our favorite ship, the Viking Polaris, for a cruise along the Chilean Fjords.
We had an unforgettable trip to Antarctica on the Polaris in 2024, and if you are at all interested in that kind of adventure, I encourage you to read our original story. This trip is a repositioning cruise that gets the ship back from its northern summer season in the Great Lakes to Ushuaia, Argentina and ready for its summer season in Antarctica.
There were quite a few guests who started the cruise in the Great Lakes and were planning to be on the ship through the first voyage to Antarctica – more than 60 days at sea. We weren’t sure if we were jealous or thankful that we would only be on for 13 days. But we were happy to share in their enthusiasm for their upcoming trip to Antarctica.
Beginning our trip
After our stopover in Santiago, we took a short trip to Valparaiso to board our ship. We didn’t have time to explore the city since we went straight to the port. The port itself was a little beat, with lots of construction going on. After we checked in with Viking we boarded a shuttle with all the other departing passengers to get on the ship.
Coming home to the Polaris
Once on board the Polaris, we immediately felt right at home. The ship is not too crowded, with a maximum capacity of 378 guests and 260 crew, and this cruise felt a little lighter on passengers than our first trip. We recognized a few of the expedition team from Antarctica and a couple of them even recognized us.
We settled into our stateroom, a nice size at 222 square feet with a “Nordic Balcony” – basically a full window that slides down to open with a touch of a button, allowing an unobstructed view of the scenery and wildlife. It’s a great way to experience the outdoors without having to go outside and sit in the cold.
After a quick walk around the boat we found all our favorite areas from our last cruise – the library with comfy chairs for reading, the Explorer’s lounge with the floor to ceiling windows at the front of the ship, and the expansive spa with the pool size hot tub.
Our cabin was toward the bow this time and on a lower floor, deck 2, instead of in the middle, and while it took us a bit to get used to the different location soon we discovered that we had what felt like our own private elevator and easy access to the Hide in the bow, a fun little hang out that took us a few days to find on our first trip.
Itinerary
This Patagonia cruise was a lot more relaxed than our Antarctica journey. The goal is to cruise through the Chilean Fjords and get close to a number of beautiful glaciers, as well as see the wildlife. The Polaris is equipped with what they call the “toys” – Zodiac boats, Special Operations Boats, kayaks and two small submarines.
Everyone signs up before the cruise for these daily excursions, but it’s not until we get on the ship that the team starts finalizing the schedule. The first couple of days, while we sailed away from Valparaiso into the fjords, were filled with attending briefings and training for the activities and getting our loaner gear sorted, for us, waterproof pants and boots since we already had our Viking jackets from Antarctica.
The expedition team continually evaluates the weather and conditions as well as passenger interest before they start updating everyone’s schedules in the Viking app. A lot of other passengers were confused about this but since we went through it before we understood the process.
Expedition Team
Since the main focus of the cruise is the wildlife and natural beauty, the Expedition team is the core part of the journey. They are a team of experienced guides, many with deep scientific backgrounds. We had a ship historian as well as an ornithologist – Jeff, a walking encyclopedia of bird species.
Every evening just before dinner, the Expedition team holds a briefing in the Aula, the beautiful auditorium at the stern of the ship, to explain the plan for the next day and do a short presentation on some unique aspect about the region’s history or wildlife. We tried to see all of these live, but it was also handy that they were recorded so we could always watch them later on our stateroom television.
During the rest of the cruise the expedition team also hosts other learning activities – there was a daily bird and wildlife sighting debrief, as well as deep dives and lectures on the history of the area. In particular, we really enjoyed the hands-on binocular class and the session on iPhone photography.
I never knew why I could never see much out of binoculars but with a couple quick tweaks I got a lot more out of them. Viking provides two sets of binoculars in each room for us to use during the trip, but there were plenty of more serious birders who had brought their own more sophisticated sets, as well as fancy cameras and long lenses for photography.
Our first stop – Puerto Chacabuco
Something different about this cruise is that we did make two stops at actual towns in Chile – Puerto Chacabuco and Punta Arenas.
Our first stop, Puerto Chacubuco, is a tiny little port that is just a little larger than a shipping container. It seems to be a stopping off point for some Patagonia travelers. Our ship was too big to dock there so we took the Viking tender boats to shore.
There were a number of choices for excursions that day but we did the included visit to a local national park, Rio Simpson. We got to see lots of natural beauty – waterfalls, the river, intriguing local plants, and a very fake puma. Our bus ride took us back through the town, giving us a tiny glimpse into the lives of local residents.
Visiting a few of Patagonia’s glaciers
After our quick stop in Puerto Chacabuco, we moved on to continue exploring some of the many glaciers in the Southern Patagonia Ice Field. There are hundreds of small glaciers and dozens of named glaciers, like the ones we visited – Glacier Pio XI and El Brujo.
The Polaris is small enough that we were able to travel deep into the fjords to get really close to these two glaciers. Close enough that if we opened our window in the room, we could occasionally hear them calving.
Thanks to our expedition team with the zodiac boats and special operations boats, we were able to get even closer to the glaciers. Glacier Pio XI is massive and hard to miss, the largest in the area, about 488 square miles. It’s one of the very few glaciers in the world that is still expanding.
And yes, it is named after a pope – an Italian missionary Alberto de Agostini named it after the sitting pope after he was the first person to cross the Southern Ice Field in 1931. Agostini also has his own named glacier, fjord and a national park in the region.
El Brujo (the Wizard in Spanish) is smaller than Pio XI, but because of that we were able to get much closer to it during our Zodiac cruise. It was much more active and we heard lots of calving during our short visit.
Punta Arenas and the island of the penguins
After exploring the glaciers, we stopped at Punta Arenas, Chile, a small city on the Chilean side of the Tierra del Fuego from Argentina and another popular launching point for Patagonia adventures.
From Punta Arenas we took a ferry excursion over to Magdalena Island, to spend a day visiting the Los Pingüinos Natural Monument, a protected colony of Magellanic penguins. As a penguin lover, this was definitely one of the highlights of the trip.
The ferry was a bit rougher than expected and the closest I got to seasickness during our trip. Luckily the crew warned us it would be rough on the way back so we were prepared, but it turned out to be fine, just a little uncomfortable.
Once we arrived it was chilly and blustery, perfect penguin watching weather. The colony has a marked path around all the burrows and up to the historic lighthouse, and we did a short tour before our guide left us to wander on our own back to the ship.
Since it was early in the breeding season, a lot of penguins were just arriving to meet up with their mates and build their nests. While the colony had fewer penguins than we imagined, there were tons of other birds nesting and flying around the island. Jeff the bird guy was busy taking lots of pictures and identifying all the birds along the way.
At its peak this colony has more than 60,000 breeding pairs who nest on the island from October through late March, protected and managed by the Chilean national forestry service. There were quite a few penguins there but not nearly as many as we saw on our trip to Antarctica. I got the opportunity to watch one little guy building his nest by picking clumps of grass and bringing them back down to his burrow. He made many trips while we were there, and also seemed quite nosy peeking into everyone else’s burrow nearby to check them out.
After we returned from our bumpy ferry ride, we wandered into town with a couple friends from our ship in search of the Shackleton Bar to sample a Calafate pisco sour, the local version of the popular Chilean national cocktail. The city was compact and easy to get around, and after a couple of false starts we found the bar just off the main plaza in a historic hotel. We kept walking by it because we expected a dive bar and it was tucked inside a nice hotel.
Once inside we found a number of our expedition guides from our ship enjoying their drinks and we ordered up our own Calafate sours and empanadas to share. The drinks were a beautiful dark purple and surprisingly strong, if I had had any more I’m not sure I would have made it back to the ship!
After our snack we walked back through the plaza where there was a town gathering, not sure what it was but it seemed to be related to an upcoming election. We noticed a lot of banks, both local and international branches which felt unusual for this small city. We learned later that in addition to the tourism that comes through here for Patagonia, the city has been part of a duty-free trade zone since the late 70s, so a lot of commercial business flows through the area.
The city was charming and I found myself wishing we had a bit more time there to explore. It would be a great place to return to for a longer visit to the area.
Garibaldi Fjord and Yendegaia National Park
For our next two days the weather got a little more challenging but the crew and the Expedition team made some adjustments and took us into a couple more beautiful areas.
On a previous cruise we became very familiar with the Windy App, which shows the surrounding weather with a color-coded map indicating the wind speed and the wave swells. We could tell that the seas were getting a little more challenging from the red and purple colors on the map.
In our evening briefings before dinner, the team kept us up to date on the weather and what adjustments they were making for us. We were able to sail into the stunning Garibaldi Fjord and get close up to lots of birds and we took advantage of those couple of days with our warmest gear to protect us against the wind and some light rain.
The crew originally planned for us to land in Yendegaia National Park, which is a relatively recent park and really difficult to reach. Getting there by land right now is over a largely unpaved road, though a more modern road connection is under construction. Unfortunately the wind didn’t cooperate with us for a safe landing but we were able to get out on the zodiac boats and explore the scenery.
Sailing the Strait of Magellan and Beagle Channel
Originally our ship was supposed to sail out and around Cape Horn to come back into Ushuaia but the weather didn’t cooperate with us. We know some others on our ship were disappointed, but we had already done it on our way back from Antarctica. Instead, our captain re-routed us through the Strait of Magellan up the Beagle Channel to our final stop, Ushuaia.
On our Antarctica trip we had embarked and departed from Ushuaia, but didn’t get to spend much time there. Just enough to walk around the town and take some selfies at the appropriate places at this “Fin de la Mundo.” This time we were able to do a bus tour around the area, up to the top of the hill, where it was snowing, then down to tour the maritime museum and the famous prison in the center of town.
The historic prison was built in the early 20th century when the city was small and it became a very remote prison for the most dangerous Argentine criminals. The building now is a multi-purpose tourist attraction with a gift shop, snack bar, maritime museum and prison exhibit.
The prison has been closed since 1947 but a lot of the prison areas were left intact, including several cells, the bathroom and shower room. It was a fascinating tour and since it was so cold that day, we could really imagine what it must have been like for those prisoners kept so far away at the “end of the world.” I was definitely ready to leave.
After our tour we walked around a bit in the town but with the blustery weather we were happy to return to our warm ship and get ready to depart the next day.
Shipboard amenities and entertainment
The Viking Polaris does an amazing job with their food and this trip was no exception. They have four different dining venues on board – the World Cafe which serves breakfast, lunch and dinner; the Restaurant and Manfredi’s which do fine dining and Italian respectively, with full service, and Mamsen’s, a Norwegian style snack bar open late morning through the afternoon.
The food is always excellent but the service always puts it over the top for us. In the World Cafe we were spoiled daily with omelets and freshly poached eggs, delicious burgers made to order at lunch, excellent sushi including custom handrolls for dinner, and Mark’s favorite, his own personal tomahawk steak. We enjoyed meals at both the Restaurant and Manfredi’s with excellent personal service and I always love a fresh waffle with brown cheese from Mamsen’s. Plus new flavors of gelato every day and too many other desserts to mention.
Luckily the Polaris also has a nicely equipped gym with plenty of machines and a separate room for stretching, yoga and weight training. All with a beautiful view of the ocean.
The night life on the ship is low-key. There were two different music duos, classical and contemporary, and some fun musical shows in the Aula. The Explorer Bar and the Library are fun places to hang out after dinner, and the Hide on the bow of the ship has the last call around 1 a.m. We’re not party animals, so it worked great for us.
Summary
Overall this was a wonderful experience and we were happy to be back on the Viking Polaris. The 13-day itinerary was a nice mix of relaxing sea days, exploring nature with our knowledgeable guides and seeing a couple of small Chilean towns. Plus visiting the huge penguin colony was a definite bonus for me. We were a bit jealous of the guests continuing on to Antarctica, but we had a lot of fun sharing our knowledge of our previous trip with them. We hope to be able to do another Viking Expedition cruise in the future.