Day 10 - Next up Southern Chile

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Day 10- Traveling down to the Magallanes region

The next day, we went to the airport to catch our flight to Punta Arenas. Despite this being a lunchtime flight, our good fortune with the food didn´t last, and all we were served was a box containing chocolate biscuits! Not very substantial when you hadn´t eaten since breakfast.

The landing was a little hairy, as there was a 120kph wind blowing, which is windy even for there. We were met at the airport, and put into buses for the 3.5hr transfer to Puerto Natales. The other travellers in the bus was those staying at the same hotel as us, the rest were staying in a hotel a bit further out of town. On the way, we saw lots of ranches and at periodic points along the road, bus stops. There is one road which runs between the towns, and a number of buses which the farm workers catch to return to their families. We saw a bit of wildlife on the way including flamingos, condors, and rheas (flightless birds like emus). The guide Edwardo thought he had seen a fox so we pulled over to look for said fox, but to no avail. It was a this point we noticed he had been sipping some sort of green tea thing through a straw, and wonderd whether he would pass it round to the rest of the bus so we could all see "the fox". Actutually when questioned about said liquid he did explain that it was like tea, and that it is very popular in this region and in some places they even drink it cold.

At Puerto Natales were were given a whistle stop tour of the town which consisted of two main streets and a small square, and were advised to take water in to the National Park as there are no shops to buy provisions. The hotel was nice and we even managed an upgrade to a turret room, as the original room had beds that weren't made. The new room was a suite with it's own balcony one of only two in the whole hotel and even had a jucuzzi bath, not that we were going to be here long enough to appreciate any of these as we were only staying one night and it was already around half eight. We went out to look for a shop for water and located the local U Mart, so stocked up on supplies, and battling the wind went back down the road towards the hotel to find somewhere to eat. We found a small restaurant, and the food was nothing spectacular, but nice and not greatly expensive. We went back to the hotel and our room whilst huge, and had a view of the water, meant that the wind howled on the windows so much it made the curtains move, it was that strong! We knew we had an early start in the morning so blogged for a bit then turned in.

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