Brazil, Argentina, Chile, NZ, Australia, Vietnam

Brazil, Argentina, Chile, NZ, Australia, Vietnam and a quick trip to Cambodia

Monday, 29 November 2010

A morning in Punta Arenas before flying to Santiago - 19th Nov

We decided we would not get up ridiculously early despite only having till noon to see the city. This proved a wise move as despite being an ok place there was not too much to see, that is unless you wanted to travel 70km to see a Penguin sanctuary. It was a bright sunny day but the harsh wind reminded us how far south we actually were. Indeed yesterday night, on the way to the restaurant, we not only experienced horizontal rain but rain actually going upwards towards the sky.

On advice of the guide book we took a look around the main central area and admired some of the old historic buildings, we saw the statue of Ferdinand Magellan in the very pleasant
Plaza Munoz Gamero and visited the relatively large Cementerio Municipal, which as per the book, reflected the turbulent history of Patagonia with English, Spanish, Croation, as well as the local wealthy family's graves set out next to each other in immaculately kept and tranquil grounds.



We then returned to the hotel to pick up our bags and headed for the airport. We checked in in good time and had a bite to eat for lunch prior to boarding our plane for Santiago.

The plane times and schedule had changed several times since booking it a couple of months ago and it had morphed into a 5 hour flight with two stops. As we had checked in relatively early it was a nice surprise to be seated in the emergency isle with the perk of extra leg room.

We settled in for our long journey.... taking an afternoon nap almost immediately after take off. I awoke just as we were descending to make our first stop some 20mins after take off.

Hang on a second, we were landing at Puerto Natales, a place we were at some 24 hours before and had left to travel by minibus for a 3 hour journey to catch this plane.... we could not work out how we were not able to find or book on a flight from Puerto Natales to Santiago when planning this trip and probably never will.

We arrived in Santiago just in time for sunset and after a little bit of Columbo type deduction managed to get the free transfer bus to the hotel.



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