Punta Arenas - It´s Chilly in Chile

---

We left Argentina to see in the New Year in Chile. This time it only took two and a half hours to cross the border, a whole two hours quicker than our previous experience in this direction. The Magellan Straits were particularly rough and we stayed on the bus this time!

Punta Arenas is the most Southerly town on continental America. It was much bigger than we expected and our hostal was a bit further from the bus drop-off than we had anticipated! Looking at some of the pubs and nightclubs advertising their dancing girls which we had to walk past, there’s probably a reason the hostal was so cheap! Still, it was nice and the staff were very friendly and therefore we can really recommend the'Independencia if anyone is looking for a place to stay in Punta Arenas.

After a peaceful evening feasting on perfectly cooked pejerrey and a good night’s sleep, we checked out the bus times to Puerto Natales, anticipating spending the day exploring Arenas. All the buses were full, except the 1pm departure, leaving us 90 minutes to see the sights!

We had done enough museums recently to justify leaving them off our itinerary. Instead we had a wander up to the viewpoint where you got an idea of the size of the place. It was interesting to see the patchwork quilt effect that the multi-coloured roofs had on the view. Then we went to see the cemetery which was like a big version of BA’s Recoleta, but lacking celebrity graves like Evita! There are a lot of European graves from around a century ago, showing the extent of immigration at that time. There seemed to be a lot of Scottish settlers judging by the names on the headstones.

Aside from the plaza, that was all we had time for. It wasn’t our favourite place and we didn’t really feel we had missed out on much. If you want electronics or camping gear though, the nearby duty free area is supposed to be worth visiting.

---

Photos

The Plaza
Not exactly thrilling stuff is it?!!

Comments

[Abbey]

It's looks nice to me!