It is obvious that the gap between my last travels was too long. Forgetting the basics. Stupid me. For example, putting my swiss army knife away into my check-in luggage before checking it in at the airport. I only noticed it after both Axel’s and my luggage had already been sent off the conveyor belt. The officer at the counter asked a Chilean guy if he would put it into his luggage, and he agreed. Unfortunately, it was nowhere to be found on arrival. Whether it fell out of the bag during transit or it was some clever scheme to keep the knife doesn’t really matter. Only that it’s gone.
Flying down south I was both impressed and surprised by the barren, deserted landscape. From the air, one could see the various volcanic mountains looming above the dense carpet of clouds. When we approached Puerto Montt as quick stop-over, it was so similar to what I had seen in Scotland with its short, yellowish grass landscape with lots of lakes and puddles. I like.
Punto Arenas is one of the further-most south towns. It’s very windy and today we had gusts of up to 104 km/h. Then bright, warm sun alternates with short spills of rain causing you to often change the configuration of your jacket and/or hat. We came across lush fields of flowers and grass when approaching from the airport, however, inside the town, there was not much to see of it.
Turns out we were somewhat ill-prepared for this place. Turns out that there’s no road to Cape Froward, the most southern point, but it can only be reached via a four days hike. As we didn’t have a tent nor camping equipment, this didn’t seem possible or sensible. Turns out we wouldn’t need four days here. So we cut the stay down to two nights to gain some more time for better places. While I dispise too touristy places, this was completely the opposite, making it really hard for organizing things.
We visited the cemetary with its maze of funny shaped sentinel bushes, guarding the extraordinary graves of the mostly slavic immegrants (like a light version of the Recoleta cemetary in Buenos Aires). Axel and I then took a two hours (one-way) ferry trip to Isla Magdalena with has a huge colony of penguins. Almost as many birds as on the Ballestas Islands near Paracas in Peru, but certainly as tame as the birds on Galapagos. This meant that the birds were not afraid of you at all (in fact they would rather attack you if you violated their privacy) so you could get close, very close for nice photos (unfortunately, there was a huge cloud covering the sky, so no good light for photos). All in all, it was a nice experience that we gained. I think I have seen enough penguins now after the complete lack of them in Madagascar.
After two nights eating empanadas (much cheaper) and drinking wine (moderately cheap) we’re now on our way to Puerto Natales for some serious hiking. If our plans don’t change, brace yourself from the report of a day hike to the Torres and a two-days hike for the rest of the W circuit (Axel might still need some slight convincing for the latter, but I’m confident he would enjoy it).
BTW: Axel is also blogging about the trip and does so in german language (kind of, heh). Please feel free to drop by his version of this journey aswell: http://travelling-argentina.blogspot.com.ar/
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