Total Miles Traveled: 9,304
From Torres del Paine, we traveled by bus about 5-6 hours, stopping briefly in Puerto Natales before arriving in Punta Arenas which overlooks the strait of Magellan to Tierra del Fuego. It is the southernmost city in Chile (about 150,000 residents) and departure point for Antarctica. The weather can be severe here, being nice and sunny in one moment and then cold, windy, and rainy in another. Apparently, Richard Gere spent almost a month here while waiting for the weather to clear up so he could travel by boat out to Antarctica.
Outside of getting to Antarctica, Punta Arenas is known for its sheep farming and its penguin colonies at Seno Otway and Isla Magdalena. The latter is said to have a population of 150,000 penguins, while the former has about 6,000. Well, in our case, it was more like 11 penguins, that we could see at least. But, we arrived late in the season and supposedly they were already migrating north to Brazil. It would have been cool to walk amongst thousands of penguins, but alas, that was not the case. Still cool to see them up close and in the wild though.
One final note, we stayed at a rustic B&B tucked away in the forest called Casa Escondida. Again, an interesting story to be told. The co-owner, Luis, was a character. At 17, he had bought a round-trip ticket from Venezuela to Houston, Texas to see Pink Floyd in concert. He made it to the concert but didn’t take that return flight. He returned to Chile some 11 years later after working in Houston near where I grew up (Greenspoint Mall) and studying music in Atlanta where he was a bass guitarist in a band. Then, he got a degree in English education and became an English teacher in Santiago, Chile before starting the B&B with his wife in Punta Arenas. And get this, he built all of the cabins and furniture by himself. It took him the better part of 2.5 years full time… Here’s a photo of the sauna he built:
Want to see more photos? Click here to see a slideshow on Flickr
