Thursday, March 8, 2012

Patagonia Day 1: Punta Arenas/Puerto Natales

So, as my loyal followers may have noticed, I was in Patagonia for the past 10 days on one of the best trips I've ever taken.  I saw so many cool and beautiful and otherworldly things that it doesn't seem possible to sum it up in a single post.  Thus, I'm going to break it down by day, and give a more detailed account of what happened in the southermost areas of the Americas.

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Day 1 started in Santiago.  My flight left at the crack of noon, so I got up early.  Real early, like 9:00 AM early.  Packed up, I threw my backpack on and started to walk to the subway.  It was funny, as soon as I started walking through the streets of Santiago like that, I went from a perceived "possibly a local" to "GD tourist".  I felt a few strange looks, people wouldn't hand me flyers, and gift-sellers pursued me harder than usual.  All in the 3 blocks to the metro station.

Once at the airport, I picked myself up a little light reading for the flight.
Surprisingly, this turned out to be a great tool for tweaking my Spanish.  The pictures help determine the context, so its relatively easy to figure out what any unknown words mean.  Also, since they all end with a "joke"  (signified by the appearance of "Plop!"), it usually indicates a double entendre.  So really, reading comic books makes me smarter.  Take that, teachers.

Also, the security for national flights in Chile was about as airtight as a screen door.  Here's a shot after getting through security:
The security rivaled the strictest of public libraries.  But they have no terrorism problems, so why bother?  Everybody kept their shoes on, photo IDs were not checked, and the X-ray machine conveyor belt was set to "overdrive".  It was great, I haven't felt so unmolested at an airport in a long time.

Even the flight down was very enjoyable.  The trip was 4 hours in total, broken up by a 15 min layover in Puerto Montt (approx halfway to Punta Arenas).  It sounds like it would be annoying to have a layover on a flight like this, but it sort of kept things changing and interesting.  We ascended, got an in-flight meal, had another 30 mins, descended, then repeated it again after the layover.

Now, I know what you're thinking.  "Sure, you repeated the cycle, but no way you got a second in-flight meal, right?"

WRONG.  TWO in-flight meals.  And they weren't just some peanuts and a plastic grin.  These were full meals.
I took a picture of the first, but I didn't feel comfortable taking a picture of the second.  The guy next to me was clearly surprised when I took a picture of this meal, and I didn't want to come off any more asian than I already did.

Anyway, once we arrived in Punta Arenas, I decided to try and get a bus right away to Puerto Natales so I could get into Torres del Paine the next day.  I was able to get a 7:30 PM bus out, so I had about 90 mins to kill in the city.  Punta Arenas is right on the Straits of Magellan, so I hiked down and got a look.

The town seemed unique, albeit a little vanilla.  I would spend a little more time here at the end of the trip, so I wasn't worried about exploring much further.

Puerto Natales was about 3 hours away by bus, and by the time we got there it was about 11:00 PM.  It was cold and windy, especially compared to the last 3 months of Santiago summer nights.  I ducked into the first hostel I saw, bought bus tickets into Torres del Paine the next day, and relaxed a bit.  There were 3 girls who had just finished their time in the Israeli army, and were traveling around South America for a year.  They had this method of trimming stray mustache hairs by twisting up a piece of strong threat, and using it like scissors on each other.  We spoke for a little while, and then called it a night.  I slept that night with images of enormous mountains and lush forests splayed through my dreams.

5 comments:

  1. Welcome back, it's good to read your blog again! Looking forward to hearing more about your trip! Dad

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  2. Stumbled upon your blog. Am another gringo in Chile. Any tips/suggestions for traveling down to Patagonia/Puenta Arenas? Hoping to get down there sometime in June.

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  3. Hey man. Are you locked into going down there in June? That's pretty much the dead of winter here, and being so close to Antarctica, it's going to be much different than in Jan-Feb-March.

    Best chances to get there are flights into Punta Arenas, then take buses from there. It's a 20+ hour bus ride from Santiago to Punta Arenas, and it'll probably take even longer than that in the winter.

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  4. Thanks man. Nothing locked down thus far; I have 2 weeks in June for free travel and southern Chile is on my bucket list. Any other tips or suggestions of things to check out in Chile? Such a big country, so much to see!

    Great blog, keep up the great work! Will def follow.

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    1. Thanks man! I took a look at your blog as well, good stuff.

      As for trips, I'm looking to get up to the Atacama Desert this winter (San Pedro de Atacama is the most popular spot). The further north you go in Chile, the better off you'll be in the Winter. I don't know what the weather situation would be in the Lake district down South, but I've heard the area near Bariloche (Argentina) and Chalten is also very beautiful. I know there are some volcanoes you can hike too, if you feel so inclined. Good luck!

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