On the road again ..

Anita's House in El Chaltén was quite nice and I even catched some sleep after the hike because I wore earplugs that night and fortunately missed the screaming neighbour. :D
So I was well rested to drive the 800km to Punta Arenas including a border crossing near Rio Gallegos. The biggest city in south Chile welcomed us in a very patagonian manner: windy, cloudy and grey. At least our hostal was a nice one (Hostal Entre Avenidas).

The very next day surprised us with nice weather and we took a tour south to Puerto del Hambre, the place where the first spanish soldiers tried to establish a settlement .. and starved to death. Hint: skip that! Only 3km nearby one can find Forte Bulnes, a rebuild complex of log cabins where the first chilean settlers succesfully started an establishment.

There is a tour (in spanish) and a small forrest with viewpoints that give a good impression of the hazardous environment terms

Since the Strait of Magellan is a dangerous place there are a few ship wrecks near Punta Arenas

After returning our car at the airport, me and Aleix visited the cemetery since it's known to be one of the 10 most beautiful ones in the world .. at least for visitors.

One can see many different architectural styles at the cemetery .. a bit morbid, but also beautiful

Since I wasn't hungry and also wanted to make some progress with this blog I decided to stay at the hostal while Aleix and Anton left for 1 1/2 hours for diner. More than 6 hours later - 30 minutes before we had to get up again to catch our flight - they came back totally drunk. In a retrospective it had it's funny moments, like when Aleix tried to set off his alarm with the TV remote control. *lol*
In the end everything turned out good .. at least until we left the plane in Santiago and our rental car was not ready. But that's another story.

Back to overview ..

Pictures copyright by Dennis Willam. All rights reserved.