Maipu Street Hostal Punta Arenas

Thursday, 28th Jan 2010
Punta Arenas, Chile
We are now in the southern tip of the Chilean mainland, about 1,300 miles south of Santiago. Early this morning we travelled mostly east in the Straits of Magellan. We passed the Cabo Crosstides where the currents of the Pacific and Atlantic meet. Then we sailed into the Paso Ingles and past th...

We woke up early in the morning in a very cold house. The wood that we left in the furnace burned out and it became chilly inside. It was already raining outside. We packed up quickly, ate a small breakfast and went to a ferry. We received information that the ferry only goes once today and we have to be in the harbour before 12pm. The murphy's ...

Ferry from Puerto Williams to Punta Arenas: http://www.tabsa.cl/Eng/Html/PuertoWill iams.php I was hoping to have some king crab before boarding the ferry to Punta Arenas, but the restaurant I wanted to go to was closed. Instead, I went to a place called Resto del Sur, near the town center. I had potato/onion cream soup, a ham/cheese empanada, a...

Near Punta Arenas there are a couple of places where the small magellanic penguins return to each year to mate and breed. Penguins are monogamous and very organized, mostly they return each year to the same breeding cave. If they need to do some penguin poop they waddle out of the cave, turn around, do what needs to be done and waddle back.
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I am on Megallan Straits! Who would have thunk it? I had a very long bus journey from Puerto Montt, about 30 hours! I had to stamp out of Chile, into Argentina, ride a long way, the stamp back OUT of Argentina, and back into Chile. The road south in Chile is closed due to late volcanic action, which wiped out one little village. So...had to go a...

I made it into town with no tire problems. Here I stayed in a pretty ****** hostel, but met 4 Israelis, a couple and 2 girls. They were very nice, and I spent the following day with them on a boat ride to see some penguins. The penguins were cool, but overall the outing was a little disappointing. The island looked like a war zone. I was complet...

January 27th
I haven't written in several days and am just going to sum up what happened in Ushuaia. I have had a great time in town checking the local shops, restaurants, prison museum and taking a windy boat tour up the Beagle Channel. Ushuaia will always hold a special place in my heart. The sleepy town streets engulfed by the huge surro...

Hi everyone, and yes I am still alive and reactively unscathed after completing the W trail at Torres DE Paine. I suppose you want to know what the W stands for? Well it is a trail that you take that resembles a W, there are also other tails called the circuit, the tortoise shell and the Q. However you either need 10 days or more, to be insane o...

One bus and one ferry ride later we landed in Punta Arenas, Chile. The name literally means "Sandy Point" and historically the city of 120,000 has been a penal colony, international sheep farming centre and coal ship refueling stop. Today it is the commercial heart of Patagonia and a major tourist stop [over]. The town does have a huge 100,000 s...

Wow! We had another great day. Once the ship had dropped anchor in the harbor we loaded onto a tender with our tour group and had a short ride to the dock. There we loaded onto our bus where Rosa Marioso, our guide, welcomed us to Chile. We headed out of town on our way to an
estancia or ranch which is located on Riesco Island about 95 km fr...