Punta Arenas

Punta Arenas turned out to kind of be a dump. If you walk a few blocks from the main park, any building that is not fenced in by big metal bars and spikes has graffiti on it and many of the building appear a bit run down and messy or abandoned. It is a shame because Punta Arenas was a bustling port until the Panama Canal opened in 1914. The center is surrounded by enormous mansions from the wool boom era, which are done up in European style architecture. The town in still surrounded by sheep ranches. We have seen many sheep through out our travels in Patagonia.

We stayed at a B&B, which was about a 15 minute walk from the center. It was an interesting walk through residential neighborhoods. Many of the houses are made of colorfully painted metal sheeting, like Puerto Natales. We chose the B&B because it was cheaper than all of the hostels in the center and wound up being the most comfortable bed and nicest room we have had during our whole trip! It was a great place to recover from Torres del Paine.

We delayed our departure to Ushuaia (ooh-shwai-a) after being delayed at Torres del Paine. We originally had bus tickets for Wednesday and pushed them back two days to ensure we got to see all that Punta Arenas had to offer. Really we didn't need all the time there, there wasn't much to do.

The day we arrived we walked the bike path along the waters of the Magellan Straight. Punta Arenas gets almost daily cruise ships, and there was one anchored out there each day we were there. It appears the government tried to revive the water front at some point. There is a really nice bike path, and all sorts of exercise equipment and basketball courts. But it of course has all been neglected and graffitied. And I was quite sad to see that the shore was littered with loads of trash. We also walked to the central square to have a look at all the mansions, and this was the only nice area of the city we saw.

Our second day in town we took a ferry ride on the Magellan Straight to Magdalena Island to see the Natural Monument of Penguins! It was a boring two hour ride each way to get there with only an hour spent at the island, but it was pretty cool! The island is quite small and just completely overrun with penguins and sea birds! 120,000 Magellanic penguins! We got to get off the boat and walk a short path up to an old light house and back. The penguins were so fun and silly to watch. We got to see them waddle across the path, lounge in the sun like beached whales, crow at the sky like roosters and dig holes for sleeping in. We had a good time, but an hour wasn't long enough!

Our days in Punta Arenas didn't go to waste, as we found the biggest, nicest, well stocked grocery store of our journey! And in that grocery store, we found a special treat, peanut butter!! We have seen it in only one other location the whole trip, which was a small grocery store in El Chaltén. The grocery store was owned by a foreigner and he said it took him 10 years to find a distributor for peanut butter! And it was expensive, $10 a jar! So we have not indulged in peanut butter since before leaving the US and we have missed it greatly! We purchased a jar and have been enjoying the luxury of peanut butter as jelly sandwiches! For some reason the Argentinians despise peanut butter, they think its the most repulsive thing a person could want to eat. This was confirmed to us by a group of Argentinian college girls we met in the Lakes District.

The last day in Punta Arenas was spent trying to figure out how to pay a reciprocity fee to enter back into Argentina. When we came into Argentina the first time in December, the fee hadn't taken effect for land crossings yet. It started January 7th, and we each had to pay $160! They're getting back at Americas, Canadians and Australians for charging them entry fees. No other countries are charged a fee, which I don't fully understand because I would imagine some of the European countries charge some sort of fee for visa entry. The fee can only be paid online with a credit card, directly to the Argentinian government. The web page wouldn't open on the computer at our hotel and wouldn't open on our iPod's either, so we went to the bus station to ask them what to do and they sent us to the Argentinian embassy, which turned out to be closed for a holiday! We finally ended up at an Internet cafe where we were able to pay and print the confirmation. It took up many hours and lots of walking, all in extreme wind, The wind was so strong it was whipping up dirt and pelting us in the faces, and making mini tornados and blowing trash all over. Our original plan for the day had been to go to the nearby Reserva Forestal Magallanes and walk to a look out point over the city and the straight. It didn't take much for the lady at our hotel to talk us out of going in the wind!

We are now on a thirteen hour bus ride to Ushuaia (three hours for border crossing!!). We had to back track a little ways North and drive along the Magellan Straight for awhile, eventually reaching a narrow point, which we crossed via a twenty minute ferry ride. We are now on the island of Tierra del Fuego (Land of Fire), and have left behind mainland South America for now. Ushuaia is the Southern most city in the world. City being the key word though, as there are people that live in small towns and villages on islands South of Ushuaia. We spent four nights in Ushuaia before a flight back to Buenos Aires, and then home.

Our bus is full of a very large Polish tour group of 25! They have two tour directors who have taken control of the dvd player. They are playing a movie in English with Polish subtitles, but instead of letting the 12 other people (not in their group) enjoy it one of their guides reads the subtitles over the microphone! They are all old and slow getting on and off the bus and always blocking the isles and their loud chatter is annoying!