Blogs from Punta Arenas, Magallanes, Chile, South America - page 20

Ola!!! Our last few days in New Zealand were spent in Rotorua, Waitomo caves, the Bay of Islands and Auckland. In Rotorua, we went to Te Papa and Wai-o-tapu, both thermal sites with geysers, boiling mud and smelly sulphur. When people say that Rotorua stinks, it is not a reflection of the town itself (although it is quite dead and not especially attractive). Rotorua just needs some kind of giant air freshener. Some areas are worse than others, but the whole place has a general stinky sulphurous whiff about it. Some of the thermal stuff was absolutely incredible. I loved the boiling mud and bubbling pools of water, although struggled to compute that it is all natural and not powered by the national grid... We also spent a relaxing few hours in the Polynesian spa in ... read more

Well today we visited penguins, so I felt obligated to post pictures and some comments. First of all, I made an error in my previous entry, the town we are currently in is called Punta Arenas, which was kind of what I thought initially, but then figured I must have been seeing things since Punta means hooker (at least in central American Spanish) consequently I made an assumption that is was Puerto, but apparently I was wrong. Regardless, the town is quite delightful and our hotel is second to none. We started calling it the Tara hotel because of all the similarities in decorating styles (or at least we thought). The penguin expedition was a moderate success, we had envisioned an advantageous situation in which we would rent a vehicle and scour the coast for the ... read more

Por la tarde llegamos a Puerto Arenas con una lluvia impresionante, luego de recorrer un poco la ciudad, que nos hizo recordar a Bahia Blanca, por su arquitectura y cantida de anios, a orillas del Estrecho de Magallanes fue fundada la ciudad , actualmente posee 1150.000 habitantes es capital de la XII Region de Magallanes y Antartida Chilena, su economia esta basada enla mineria, hidrocarburos y carbon, la ganaderia ovina y la industria pesquera, tambien es la zona franca chilena en donde se pueden conseguir muy buenos precios de electronica pero con el cambio actual es conveniente comprar en Argentina. Fundada en 1848 por colonos proveniente de Fuerte Bulnes y lo llamaron Sandy Point (Punta Arenas), entre los colonos se encuentran dos familias importantisimas Los Braun y los Menendes Behety que al unir las familias llegaron ... read more

Punta Arenas Just a quick one because people keep asking to see photos of where we have been living and volunteering for the last month. First things first, where are we? Punta Arenas is in Chilean Patagonia. Punta Arenas is a very pleasant town of about 125,000 inhabitants hugging the shores of the Straits of Magellan. Its origin back in the 19th century was as a trading port mostly for wool and as a fuelling stop for the steamers on their way around Cape Horn. Around its main square are beautiful colonial mansions in a European style, think Paris and London. In the centre of the square is a bronze statue of Magellan and some native indians which you may recognize from Michael Palin´s Pole to Pole programme. This is the place where he waited for ... read more

Punta Arenas is the southernmost city on the South American continent. When comparing the latitude of 53 degrees south it's only as far from the equator as for example Hamburg or Manchester but because of the cold ocean currents coming from the Antarctis it is quite a cool and windy place. Even in the summer time the temperature rarely gets above 20 degrees. When flying from Santiago to Punta Arenas you really get an idea of the dimensions of the country. From the plane you can see the whole width of Chile with the Pacific Ocean on the other side and the Andes on the other side. And it's like that all the way, over 2000 kilometers south from Santiago, flying for three hours before you reach Punta Arenas. And that's just the bottom half of ... read more