Blogs from Magallanes, Chile, South America - page 6

The manor houses/palaces of Punta Arenas are some of the first buildings built by brick in the late 1800s and early 19th century Golden Age. Along with other commercial institutions, banks and residences. It was the era od European immigration of cattle keeping, mining and wood production. All these buildings are located around the town square and the French style is notorious. We visited two of these majestic buildings and all the original floor surfaces, fabrics and furnishings, statues and attention to detail remain. Totally breath taking in beauty and regal.... read more

L'incident logistique réparé (nous avons retrouvé le téléphone ... ?), nous nous mettons en chemin. Après 2h00 de stop et un peu de pluie, nous trouvons notre chauffeur : Francisco qui a déménagé de Santiago pour le Sud du pays et avec qui on discute de tout. Arrivés à Punta Arenas, Francisco nous dépose gentiment devant une auberge que nous avions repéré. La pluie menace, Eduardo, notre hôte pour ces prochains jours, nous fait signe de vite installer notre tente dans le jardin. On s'exécute rapido et on va se balader dans les environs la fin de journée. Pinguïnos Rey L'un des objectifs de Patagonie : voir les manchots. Après plusieurs repérages, la meilleure solution et d'y aller par ses propres moyens. On loue de nouveau une voiture. En plus Vanessa et Renaud change leur programme ... read more

Our only goal in this port was to see Magellan penguins and from the ferry and on the island we also saw dolphins, petrels, skuas, cormorants, kelp gulls and small starling-like birds. The weather was intermittent rain but that did not affect our enjoyment of the trip. We had heard that cruise line companies charter the ferries so booked with them although speedboats with independent travelers did arrive whilst we were on the island. Loading and unloading the ferry was a tedious affair with a single file stairway and walk from the entrance to the seating area and almost 200 people doing so. Chile does not allow any foodstuffs to be brought ashore so lunchbags were issued as we boarded containing a sandwich, mini biscuit pack and drink. Boredom on the ride meant that we ate ... read more

Geo: -53.1548, -70.9113Punta arenas claims to be the Southern most city in South America, the end of the world. It is a quaint city of 127,000 inhabitants. It takes 4 hours by air to get Santiago it takes days to get there driving, because you have to take boats, fairies, and roads. There industry includes fishing mining for copper, and tourism. They cannot grow fruits and vegetables so they import them all making them very expensive. The city has 3 universities We actually started today with sunshine, but it faded quickly. We had a 3 hour city tour this morning. Saw the downtown area where there was a market, city center with huge trees, and a large statue of Magellan. We drove to one of the high points to view the city from above. We stopped ... read more

Isa and I then crossed the border into Chile and based ourselves in Puerto Natales to get ready for the 6 day trek we were about to do in Torres del Paine National Park. We started by hearing the catamaran we wanted to take on the first day was broken and we would have to walk an extra 5 hours on the first day. Woops. By the time we got there, thankfully it had been replaced with a smaller motor boat, which meant we had to wait a little bit longer to get on it but it was still shorter than walking 5 hours more and risking arriving past dark to our first camp. We therefore walked the 4 hours planned and set camp in Refugio Grey, near the Glaciar Grey. That night was very windy ... read more