Days in Punta Arenas

We spent our last day in Puerto Natales relaxing after the tour in the Torres del Paine national park. In the evening, we visited an African / Patagonian restaurant (Afrigonia) with very good food. So we were ready for the 3 hour bus ride further south to Punta Arenas.

Puerto Natales

 In the afternoon we arrived there and with the help of a friendly owner of a hostal, we checked in at B&B Hostal. It's a nice hostal not far away from the main square. Since it was still early that day we went to visit the center and we also organized the tour for the next day, a visit to Islas Magdalena with 50'000 Penguins breeding. The tour starts at 5 in the afternoon, so we had half a day for sight-seeing and for a visit at a museum with information about the inhabitants of south patagonia before the Europeans arrived. Nice display and good information. It was a windy day (actually every day here is a windy day) and we arrived on time at the harbour to board the ship at 17.00. After 2 hours, we stopped at Isla Magdalena and had 1 hour to take pictures of penguins (they are not shy at all). The whole island is covered with penguins as you can see on the picture! Back in town (22.00) we went to a recommended restaurant (La Luna) for seafood and patagonian lamb! Very tasty.

Ship at the harbour

Isla Magdalena

The day after the island, we wanted to visit a national park, but it was difficult to find information about it: in the hostal, they didn't know that this park exists and the maps in our guidebooks were just old, so we couldn't find the tourist information (at first). Once we had the information that there is no public transport to this park, we took a cab to get there. We spend 3 hours there (from the hilltop it's possible to see Fireland) before we headed back to town (again by taxi).
Today was our last day in Punta Arenas and we visited the maritime museum and the graveyard. Around 1880 a lot of people from Yugoslavia left their country and settled in the very south so you find a lot of graves with names ending on -ic.

National Park

Tomb of a Sailor

Sun set in Punta Arenas

 Now, we are ready for "the end of the world" and tomorrow we drive to Ushuaia (12h), our last stop in the south before we fly to Buenos Aires from there!