Goodbye South America, hello South Pacific! It’s hard to believe, but the first leg of our trip is over. We flew out of Santiago last night and are now in the Auckland airport, waiting to fly on to Wellington. This is the farthest I’ve been from home, but we’ll be even farther soon! If you are wondering, we are currently 19 hours ahead of those of you in the Central time zone!
The last two weeks we’ve been in Punta Arenas and the Colchagua Valley (Chilean Wine region). I’ll just write about Punta Arenas today and tell you about Colchagua in a separate post because those experiences were completely different. Stay tuned 🙂
Last week we spent 8 days in Punta Arenas staring at the sea, watching HBO in English (what luck!), and cooking. As our time in South America came to an end, so did our budget for South America. We were originally planning on visiting Magdalena Island during our time there, an island with over 100,000 nesting penguins, but realized our need to save money and mostly just stayed at our motel, resting from the trek and watching dolphins from the kitchen window :). We think we’ll have another opportunity to see penguins later on – here’s hoping!
We found the place at which we ended up staying in Punta Arenas through Airbnb, and though it turned out to not be what we were expecting, it was really great in other ways. We thought we had booked a room in someone’s house on the Straits of Magellan, but it turned out to be a motel with a small community kitchen that we shared with eight other rooms (that a lot of people for one kitchen!). Most of the people there spoke English, so we had quite an adventurous week getting to know some characters who live there permanently and mingling with others coming and going like ourselves. We thought it might be stressful sharing such a small place with others, but we ended up loving it!
So far the country we have met the most people traveling from is Germany :). Last week we spent time with a young fireman from Germany who has been given a year long sabbatical from work. From the people we’ve encountered, this valuing of rest seems common for many European countries – and I love it. The more I travel, the more it seems that in the U.S. our search for progress often comes at the price of peace of mind. I tend to believe that rest is as essential to life as sleep. When we lack either (rest from work or sleep) our bodies are susceptible to illness – physical and mental. I can’t tell you how many times I wore myself out working, interning, and completing course work in grad school – only to end up sick. Self-care is no joke and it’s sometimes frightening how lightly we consider it back home. All that to say – we’ve had a lot of reminders on this trip of the importance of rest, so we’re passing it on. Here’s a reminder to not feel guilty if you need a break! Rest isn’t a luxury, it’s a human need!
On to some photos from what turned out to be a very restful week for us 🙂
This is the view from the small porch connected to the community kitchen of the Straits of Magellan. The color of the water constantly changed based on the wind and clouds overhead. It ranged from aqua to black in any given hour. We’d watch as cruise ships and fishing boats sailed in and out the Straits.
Everyday a group of 2-15 dolphins swam by the window. Sometimes we only saw their fins, but other times they would jump and flip out of the water. It was amazing how close they were to shore! The video on facebook/insta give a better look, but above is the only picture I got that really shows anything – three dark backs/fins on the left!
The Straits of Magellan. Most days we took a walk down the beach to see what we could see. It was filled with rocks of all colors! I collected them throughout the week to try and show the diversity, and ended up pocketing a couple to hopefully make into jewelry upon our return.
I don’t recall seeing green rocks in nature before – just polished in a store!
So many seagulls!
Our motel was located next to a family who fixed old wooden boats. One day the mother shared some sausage she had made with us. It was delicious, but I’m still unsure what it was we ate 😬😂! Blood sausages are pretty popular around here, and I think it was at least part that.
If you don’t know, Kirk is quite the cook! With him cooking, we ate better – taste and health wise – than we have most of the trip! Well, I say health wise, but while eating a crazy amount of vegetables, we also devoured and entire bag of flour last week 😂. Chicken and dumplings, biscuits, pancakes – we made all the things we dreamed about while hiking the week before! It was quite a luxury! When you are carrying everything you have with you, there is little space for common kitchen extras (butter, milk, oil, sugar, flour) and the places we’ve stayed don’t usually provide anything but a pot. We’ve had spices with us from the start, but having 8 days in a kitchen last week, we made the most of the opportunity and bought (and finished off) all that we’d been missing. It was delicious!
Brunch is my favorite meal :). This is a hash kirk made with leftover roast, potatoes, carrots, gravy, and fresh eggs – so yummy! Also, I gave in and bought instant coffee 😬. It was a fourth of the price of regular!
Our common breakfast, lunch, and dinner spot :).
On a couple of days we ventured the three miles into town to see some sites (and to walk off the biscuits 😉 ). This is a popular statue in town. The horse in the back has a golden saddle from the amount of people climbing on and off it for pictures :).
Some llamas/alpaca/sheep we passed on the way into town 😍.
This is the cemetery in town, also a popular attraction.
Another of the cemetery.
A view of Punta Arenas from a lookout in the city.
Both in Argentina and Chile we often saw signs like this. The hole in the ozone layer is over this part of the world, so they keep track of how harmful the sun is day to day and post it publicly. I definitely burned easily here!
One day we walked particularly far to the Nao Victoria Museum. This is an outdoor museum with full size replicas of four historical boats you can climb on and explore. This is a replica of Magellan’s Ship – the first boat to sail all the way around the world (and who the Straits are named after). It started with a fleet of five ships, but his was the only one to make it.
Another view of Magellan’s Ship replica
Aboard Magellan’s ship
From one end to the other – this was not a large ship for today’s standards! I can’t imagine sharing such small living quarters with people for so long. This wasn’t just their house, but their whole village at sea!
Below deck was the living quarters as well as food storage.
Some of these aren’t great pictures because there wasn’t much light underneath, but here are the sleeping/prisoner quarters. It was the second level on board and was only tall enough to sit/lay in. They had dummies set up throughout the boat to represent things – most looked pretty funny :).
The final level on board was where they stored food and such – even with stops, they would have needed a lot for this journey!
This is the route they took around the world – a three year journey!
The second boat we toured was the HMS Beagle replica – this was the ship that Darwin traveled on. It was a little larger than the other boat and only had two levels. The top level was similar to the other boat, but the second level was sectioned off into rooms with bunk beds – they even had “toilets” (wooden seats that you put a bucket under – not sure what they did on Magellan’s boat 🤷♀️). I really enjoyed seeing the differences in the boats. This boat was modern enough to have a wheel to turn the rudder, but the other one simply had ropes to pull side to side to move it. Both had captain’s quarters, which are small, but quite large compared to the space on the rest of the boat!
Old boat masts look so cool!
This is the second level on the Beagle. It still had a large space for storage, but behind Kirk are the rooms with bunks. It seemed to have a better use of space than Magellan’s boat.
These are the final two boats we toured, although we spent significantly less time on the Ancud – I actually don’t remember much about it as we were rushing to go catch a bus (that ended up being 45 minutes late 😂), but it was a Chilean boat used to claim the Straits of Magellan in some way.
The James Caird perhaps had the most fascinating story, although the boat itself is simply what you see here. The journey of this little life boat is considered one of the greatest maritime feats of all time. You can read more at the link below, but the short story is that a man named Shackleton lead an extremely dangerous expedition to try and cross Antarctica by land, but after losing their ship to the sea, he and a few others took this tiny lifeboat to get help and ultimately saved his men by crossing the sea during the most dangerous sailing season down south. The lifeboat was altered to be more sea worthy (adding a deck/sail/rocks to the bottom of it to balance weight), but imagine facing over 20 foot waves on this thing! It’s a really fascinating story!
I leave you with a picture Kirk took of a semi-sunken boat we passed out the way into town. The colors were so beautiful!
I’ll try to update on Colchagua Valley soon!
The Yonderers 