Friday 9 Apr 2010
Punta Arenas, Chile
Back into Chile...
Left El Calafate on the morning bus. Morning sunrise outstanding with entire sky "on fire". Fairly comfortable bus.
First arrival zone in Chile was Puerto Natales where I stopped for a huge burger and to book my onward bus to Punta Arenas. Nothing particularly amazing in this town, or scenery-wise in this area.
Bus down to Punta Arenas was packed solid. Even though I was in the last row seats, they let two people squeeze into the tiny partition between the back of my chair and the back of the bus! One was a rather large woman. Weird.. this is like something I would expect more in Bolivia or Peru than Chile
Surprisingly, once again the scenery wasn't particularly noteworthy. Just a lot of farmland pasture.
On arriving at Punta Arenas I got a place in a "hostal" near the town center. Not particularly cheap at around $30 for the night, which was the cheapest I could find! Hey I know I'm back in Chile now!
Apparently in Chile a "hostal" is actually a "hotel, but smaller". I discovered this by accident when I decided I was going to cook some pasta for myself (to save a least SOME cash) instead of eating out. Hey pasta, tuna, plus tin of pineapples and a bottle of red wine for $5 ain't bad! When I went into the kitchen the staff got a little flustered as it was off limits... doh! Nevertheless, to their credit, they let me cook in the kitchen... although there was no damned tin opener so that made getting at my tuna/pine apples a bit of a hassle.
As for the town, like Puerto Natales nothing much going on ... flying to Santiago in the morn...