Blogs from Punta Arenas, Magallanes, Chile, South America - page 16

Well, folks, we thought that Punta Arenas was the end of the world with it´s freezing temperatures, hurricane force winds and high prices on everything except alcohol (we heard... not from personal experience, of course), but we were treated to an expedition to work on a sheep farm on the island of Tierra del Fuego (The ¨Land of Fire¨) for the last few days and it made Punta Arenas look like New York City. The Magallenas region of Chilean Patagonia historically owes its prosperity to two industries; Shipping and sheep farming. The cold temperatures and high winds year round mean that not much will grow in the volcanic soil of the region except scrub and low grasses, but when sheep were brough here 150 years ago they thrived and grew thick wool that became the region´s ... read more

We left BA early in the morning, we cleaned our apartment for our rent inspection, said goodbye to people in our building, and caught a plane to Rio Grande, which is on the island on the very tip of Patagonia called Tierra de Fuego. Our plane left at 10:45am, and the flight was supposed to take 3 and a half hours. Half way through the flight, we made an unscheduled stop in a town called Trelew. The town (from what we could see) looked pretty dull. We were forced to wait until 9:30pm until they fixed the problem with the plane. I could not have picked a worse airport to be stuck in, we were tired (had been averaging less than 5 hours sleep in the previous few days). While we were waiting there I thought ... read more

Forsta maj i sydspetsen av Chile, hade inte precis planerat detta... Tierra del Fuego i den mest sydliga delen av Argentina och hela kontinenten var obeskrivligt vacker, landskapet i nationalparken nara Ushuaia liknade mycket skog-och sjolandskapet i ostra Finland, bortsett fran de hoga snobetackta bergen i bakgrunden. Vi gjorde en latt endags vandring langs stranden av en insjo, och ruskan var den mest imponerande jag nagonsin sett. Ibland undrar jag anda vad jag gor har i kylan nar jag kunde ligga pa en strand i Brasilien... men a andra sidan klarar jag mycket battre av kolden och vinden an min israeliska resekompis tack vare mina 25 ar av acklimatisering... Igar tog vi oss over till Chile, Punta Arenas, for att snart gora en 5 dagars vandring i den nationalpark som lar skall vara den vackraste i ... read more

url='/Videos/3240.html' onclick='dialog("/Videos/3240.html?popped=1","tbvideo",600,600);return false;'Sea Lions After spending another night in Puerto Natales, we took a three hour bus even farther south to Punta Arenas. There I was happy to find a laundry mat and spent the afternoon exploring the small city. The next morning Jen and I woke up at the crack of dawn to see some penguins!!! There were about ten of us in total, a couple from Argentina and a family from Japan. We got into a small boat on the shore of Seno Otway - on the Strait of Magellan! After about an hour we started to see little penguins bobbing around in the water! We pulled up close to a small island where the shore was covered in sea lions. We noticed the gigantic males first - you couldn’t miss them! They sounded ... read more

Wow!! I just got back from my overnight hike, yesterday we walked about 7km and we did the same today. We were in Torres del Paine and saw the torres and it was pretty amazing. Going into the park (which was expensive if you´re not a citizen of Chile, but don´t worry I am!) it was pretty flat, like there were some hills and all but nothing compared to the mountains, it just seemed like they came errupted out from the earth, they did but just all in one motion, like they had to come out right then and there. The way they were shaped was just straight lines like someone used a ruler it was so strange and so outrages. I´ll post some pics later! But the hike wasn´t tooo terrible, but it did have ... read more