Nearly at the end of the world

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Punta Arenas was the furtherest we got to the end of the world. There's more further south... but no more time for us to explore it. Punta Arenas is the world's southern most city after Ushuaia (further south in Argentina) and is the capital of Chilean Patagonia. Its a departure point for Antartica... but we'll be saving that trip for a much later date! It seemed to us that one of the main things to do in Punta Arenas is to visit the penguins and Jason had a particular fascination with seeing the creatures... so that's what we did. There are a few different places where you can see them, so we chose to go via land to see the Magellanic penguin colony at Seno Otway, on the shore of the Strait of Magellan. We were able to watch the penguins march back and forth from their burrows to the sea and got pretty close to some that decided to build their burrows close to the designated human walking path. After watching them in the sea James decided he wanted to take one home and make it his surfing pet.

We also visited a few old mansions from the late 1800s of families that had become well established in the region through exporting gold and raising sheep. It was interesting to see the vast amount of furniture and furnishings they had managed to ship over from Europe. And then we visited the cemetery with its funny rounded trees... but this cemetery had tacky elements - heaps of fake flowers, photo frames and little religious statutes... which just made me feel nauseous and brought about a fast paced departure. James was a little stunned with the irrationality but I blame it on the pregnancy!

So our visit to Punta Arenas brings our holidays to a close. We're back in Buenos Aires now and on our way back to La Paz, ready to get back into the swing of things. James and Jason are returning to La Paz via land, but this time along a different route - searching for rivers and mud roads. If all goes to plan (which doesn't usually happen) we should all be back in La Paz mid-week.

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