From the perspective of North Americans and Europeans, South America is indeed a mirror image. After two days in these fabulous fjords one can not help but to compare them to those of Norway or Southeast Alaska, maybe repeatedly. So similar, yet so different, almost like meeting someone who resembles an old friend who was lost to you in the shuffle of your life. Perhaps you had a conversation over a drink or two in a quiet pub, and you find that your life and experiences are completely different from those of your friend, but you can not help but remember him or her, repeatedly.
You're told it's the latitude and the water currents, the glaciers and the igneous rocks, the winds and the rain, but really it's completely different. so they say, but you remember your friend anyway. We took a Zodiac cruise and saw trees that looked like hemlock, but they were southern beech, we saw fruits that looked like blueberries, but they were calafate, and delicious.
Then finally we saw something that we all knew: a female sea lion, but it was not her. Pictured is the South American sea lion. Yes, it looks like a California sea lion, but it's not even in the same genus, and if you saw the male, with its great, shaggy lion's mane, you would know that it too was completely different.
