Blogs from Punta Arenas, Magallanes, Chile, South America

Tuesday was an early day. We grabbed our bagged brunch from the hotel (what a nice thing they did!) and walked the 2 blocks to the office for our penguin tour. We were supposed to get there at 6:15, but we stood in the line to pay for the tour until at least 7. They would really benefit from a online payment system. I thought there was only the 1 tour company that went to the island but we saw a couple there. Ours was Solo Expediciones. After a very warm bus ride to the marina, we boarded boats to head to Isla Magdalena. There are several species of penguins in the area, but the Magellan penguins are what nest on Isla Magdalena. They mate for life and come back in Sept each year to the ... read more

Le voyage tire sur sa dernière partie : l'extrême sud du continent, avec notamment les Torres del Paine, la Terre de Feu et le détroit de Magellan, à quelques encablures seulement du pôle sud. Difficile pour moi de rester insensible à l'appel de ces noms mythiques entendus depuis le collège. Mais il nous faut avant tout regagner le Chili et retraverser une dernière fois la frontière. 300km à peine de route: ca ne devrait pas être une journée trop compliquée. Alors qu'Alexis s'efforce tant bien que mal de rattraper ses bêtises à coups de bouquets de roses, on prend la route pour pouvoir traverser la frontière et commencer l'ascension des Torres del Paine dès le lendemain. La Patagonie nous avait habitué à des routes difficiles, mais là la piste est vraiment détestable: trous, grosses pierres, bosses... ... read more

This and all my blogs are available on my website with more photos https://heatherjasper.com/chile/wildlife-near-punta-arenas Say Hueque organized my penguin and whale watching tours. I went with them because of their environmental mission to go beyond sustainability. They were also super easy to work with! Highly recommended! The three most popular tours from Punta Arenas are also my favorites. This isn’t always the case. I often find the most popular places have become overly commercial, overly crowded or just plain boring. These tours are worth your time. The half day tour to see Magellanic penguins on Isla Magdalena, the full day tour to Tierra del Fuego and the full day whale watching tours truly are fantastic. I also recommend independently visiting Pali Aike National Park a... read more

Really early start today ? - breakfast at 6.15am and I’m up well before worrying about getting the stupid cases shut. Shove everything in and Rodolfo is ready and waiting to take us to the bus station at 6.30am. So nice to see him and say goodbye. He was fun to be around and had great playlists on our drives! We’re on Bus Sur this time. Not the luxury double decker we’re used to, but it’s comfortable, warm (nice!) and has overhead usb chargers which is handy. Unfortunately it also has piped audio linked to a tv screen at the front which is on an endless 5 minute loop of ads and music. David lasts about 30 minutes then goes to the front to ask the conductor to turn it off, which he does - phew. ... read more

Lunes cerrado/closed Mondays! What the ….? We had just driven 250km on dirt roads in our little rentacar to find that the only king penguin colony outside of the Antarctic was closed on Mondays and it was Monday! Jane was turning crimson and I started to laugh (which probably didn’t help). The place was deserted. There was no one to plead with. We had arrived at the end of Bahia Inutil/Useless Bay (sic) a great gash in the Western side of Terra del Fuego. What tempered our frustration was the picturesque surroundings and the blue sky sliced by waves of high cloud. In the distance the snow-capped mountains of the Darwin range were visible behind the closer peaks of Dawson island. The Magellan Straits, apparently up to a kilometre deep at this point, spread ... read more