After negotiating the fjords, we went back out to the open sea for several hundred miles before turning back inland to go through the Straits of Magellan on our way to Punta Arenas. We were really looking forward to this as it would be the narrowest of the passages we would go through. Unfortunately, what they don’t tell you before you sign up for the cruise is that we would make this traverse virtually all at night - - pitch black night. We felt just a bit cheated on this one. To make things worse, I could have sworn (and did so later) that the cruise guru in his talk said that the ship would go very slow when it passed glaciers in this area and that we should get up about 5:00 to see them. Well, I got up at 4 flippin’ 50 in the a.m., struggled into my clothes and tramped up five decks to get a viewing. Of nothing. It was still dark, absolutely no one was out and about, and up ahead I could see the lights of what had to be Punta Arenas. If there were glaciers, they were long behind us. Turns out, after speaking with other passengers, the guru had misspoken and later corrected himself, the correction having eluded me. My bad. But not a happy chappy. I couldn’t go back to sleep, so about an hour later I got up and went on deck to check out our approach to PA. This time there were about three other people up, so it was just the few of us that caught this. Well, welcome to Punta Arenas!
Both PA and our next stop are sizeable communities of 50-70,000, depending on your source, a lot bigger than I had envisioned for such a remote place. The name means “sandy point,” and was named by British vice-admiral John Byron, grandpop of the poet, who was shipwrecked in Patagonia in the mid 1700’s. The remote location made it ideal for its intended purpose as a penal colony. It began to prosper in the mid 1800’s after gold was discovered in California. Ships from the east coast would transit the Straits of Magellan (instead of going around the rougher Horn further south) and call here for refueling and supplies. It was a vital coaling station until the opening of the Panama Canal, then turned to sheep ranching and today tourism as its principal income sources. We didn’t opt for any of the ship’s tours (sheep sheering, more penguins, etc.) and just walked around the place. We couldn’t dock here, so had to use the ship’s boats as tenders to get into town. First priority went to the official tours, so we had a leisurely breakfast and watched this Chilean navy ship weigh anchor and steam out. This is looking south along the town’s coast. Sorta reminds me of Hawai’I, except there’s no volcano hiding behind those clouds.
Eventually it was our turn in late morning. PA really plays up its role as a jumping off point for Antarctic adventurers, although most of that trade is shifting to Ushuaia, which is closer.
The ship warns repeatedly that absolutely no foodstuffs are permitted to be taken off the ship and brought into any of the port cities. The authorities will fine you on the spot. It was amazing then to see a collection of apples, bananas, and various other foods that had been seized from the passengers before us. Once in the town, we just wandered about. There’s not a lot to see apart from a couple of statues and the town square.
I’m standing in front of a statue of the improbably-named Bernardo O’Higgins, the general who liberated the country and is Chile’s George Washington. Loni is walking in the main square towards the statue of Magellan, which has a Fueguian native seated at the base. Tradition has it that a visitor who kisses the big toe will one day return to Punta Arenas. This was insufficient inducement for a lipsmack, so Loni was content to merely give it a squeeze. From the polished look of the foot, plenty others have had a go. Poor old Magellan. Having found the passage and its relatively calm waters, he sailed through and charted its 350 miles in 1520 and headed west towards Indonesia, only to be mortally wounded in the Philippines in 1521. He had started out with five ships and 270 men in 1519. His navigator, Elcano (who had actually plotted the way to the Straits), took over after Ferdie’s death and made it back to Spain in 1522 – with one ship and 17 starving men. No one remembers Elcano, and Magellan gets all the glory.
The town is a bit rough, but clean enough. It sports some older colonial buildings
and a couple of churches, but little else of interest (other than the location of a public pay bathroom which we discovered in a mini-mall). We did wonder what was going on with this government building. Some local protest? Graffiti? Modern art?
The main touristy thing to do was to climb the hill behind the town and take in the view from above. The big picture looks straight down the hill to the bay; the top right looks south, and the other to the north.
We met a younger (40-ish) couple up there who offered to trade taking pictures, so this is their effort. I hope mine was better for them. They were on our cruise, although we hadn’t seen them before. From Seattle, they were in their eighth month of an around-the-world adventure, and were still enthusiastic. We figured them for dotcom babies who had cashed in big with some tech company. [Update: nope, he’s a career Marine of 28 years with a Harvard masters and years of teaching at MIT; he now teaches high school math in Seattle and is on a leave of absence; they’re traveling with only a backpack each – yikes!]
Having seen the “sights,” we decided to save our pesos and return to the ship for a late lunch. We hadn’t seen any restaurant of note. On the way back to the pier we saw this house front that had such a nifty color I had to take a pic.
Back to the pier, down to the tender, and back to more food! This guy was making pasta to order. You could choose from four different noodles, which he boiled on the spot, a variety of inclusions such as veggies, shrimp, etc., and then eight different sauces. Oye. Desserts, of course, then a quiet corner by the windows to read a book.
Later that afternoon, the last of the tenders were returning from the shore, along with a harbor boat that came to take off the Chilean local who had helped to guide the ship through the Straits. He’s the guy in the white cap in the right photo below. Both Chile and Argentina require these guides, although the ship’s captain retains command control.
Hauling in the tenders was an interesting process to watch. The ship tries to maneuver around so that this is done on the lee side out of the wind. Still, it can be a bouncing procedure. They lower the fall lines from the davits down to the tender below. A guy comes out, grabs a line attached to the pully assembly, guides the pully to the docking mechanism, and hooks it up. Unfortunately, number twelve tender had a bit of a problem. They got the aft line attached, but as the guy disappeared back inside to move to the front, the ship rolled a bit and the rear of the tender came up out of the water and the thing swung around and bashed the side of the ship with a tremendous “thunk.” They disengaged the rear line and moved away to assess the damage and try again.
Meanwhile, number 10 moved into position and had no problems hooking up. They raise it up and it folds in above the #4 deck along with the other boats. Slick. I’d like to see them do it in a rough sea anchorage. [Update 2: As we found out later they don’t do this in rough seas.]
We upped anchor and pulled out of Punta Arenas about 7:00, and headed back into the archipelago to wend our way back west, then south down to Ushuaia. Again, some gorgeous scenery until the sun set. Look at that snow-covered mountain!
Too much beauty!
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