Spending money...
Trip Start
Mar 01, 2006
1
290
551
Trip End
Dec 01, 2007
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Punta Arenas,
Chile
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
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As I said, the initial main reason for going to Punta Arenas was to check out the zona franca, a duty free zone where I was hoping to get some cheap equipment. I should have done that in BA, but when I was there it was hot, and I was not hiking! And looking back, I realized that there was more choice at similar or better prices in Ushuaia, but hey, I did not know.
Initially, I had decided that on this trip I would not carry mountain equipement such as heavy hiking shoes, heavy warm jacket, sleeping bag, etc... I had figured out that I would leave mountain areas aside, as trekking trips can be organised on shorter hollidays.
But there I was in Patagonia, and honestly I had no choice: after the big city, and even after the towns along the atlantic coast, which are all very western like in their standards, I needed to meet Patagonia on its natural side, that is, by hiking and camping ...
Still, it was possible to hire all the equipment for hiking and camping. But a few other factors came into account: I had been using non-hiking shoes for my previous hikes, taking the risk to twist an ankle more easily... I had been fine up to then, but for serious hiking, I needed hiking
shoes. And I killed my shoes on the hike to Cerro Guanaco in Tierra del fuego, they were definitively out of order, falling appart, full of a dark and foul smelling mud, and completely wet. I had been surviving with Lionel's shoes for a few days, and I needed to get some of my own. Add to that that I am always cold, and therefore I wanted to get a real warm sleeping bag. We also needed a stove, and a cooking set.
And my windstopper was not waterproof anymore, and not warm enough for the cold southern temperatures, or for the mountain temperatures I might encounter even closer to the equator.
So in the morning I had made up my mind, I went to buy a -18degC NorthFace sleeping bag, not too expensive, and I found cheap Columbia hiking shoes. The day before I had returned to the zona franca to buy a warm jacket, in fact a ski jacket, I find it really good and it was cheap too.
Two consequences: the easy one was to update my equipment entry, the more difficult one was to have 3 new items (sleeping bag, pair of shoes, and jacket), that took as much space as everything else in my pack. And I had also my australian sleeping bag, that I could not get rid of...
In the afternoon I took the bus to Puerto Natales with Milva, as Bruno and Lionel wanted to take it easy and stay a bit more in Punta Arenas, while Milva had only a few weeks left before going home. When we got in Puerto Natales, we were lucky to find a good and cheap hospedaje to stay in, where we felt like at home, and a restaurant with huge fat steacks of salmon or beef. They have to cover half of the steack with fries to avoid frightening you when you see the plate.
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