Punta Arenas

Day 764,
Punta Arenas,


I had planned to stay here for some time. First – to find an overnight place of decent Internet connection so that to uploaded images and look for the further information of the journey.

Punta Arenas, Nao Victoria Museo

Day 763
Punta Arenas, Chile

Punta Arenas (Sandy Point in English) is the largest city of the Patagonian region (120 thousand inhabitants). And here one can see the full size copy of the Magellan ship "Victoria". Nao Victoria Museum was opened to visitors on October 1, 2011.

The museum is located 7 kilometres from the town and for some reason there is neither any advertisements nor signs- posts by the road. But if one looks towards the Strait of Magellan from the right place then the ship catches the eye from far already.

Bienvenidos a la Republica de Chile

Day 762,
84 420 km since the beginning of the journey.

At the border-station of San Sebastiao . Before leaving Argentina I tried to eat up all the fresh fruit in the car, as it was not allowed to take with some raw foods to Chile. The list also included all kinds of processed foods, such as spices for example.

Completing the customs declaration was easy as in my own opinion I had nothing forbidden. But the expert eye of the officer still found one orange, which I thought of being eaten up already, from behind the seat. And it was confiscated.

  
So welcome or "Bienvenidos a la Republica de Chile". I didn`t drive straight along the major road towards Punta Arenas, which is the largest town of this region of Chile , but again turned to the south, to find out myself how far down on could get on this side of the border. There were even some roads taking to Beagle Channel on some of more detailed maps, but however, it is still the most reliable to view oneself.

And Karukinka National Park is situated there as well.

Back in Tierra del Fuego

Day 757,
84 420 km since the beginning of the journey.

 While in Antarctica I had left my car at the campsite, it was said to be a good solid place. And now again back to household issues. To unpack the belongings, wash the clothes from salty water. Then came the most important action - the copying of images: pictures and videos from various memory cards first to the computer and then two backups to different external hard drives. As the computer hard drive usually chooses the very wrong moment to get broken, for example, when you are copying pictures from the memory card to the computer and the card is empty. And the backup was not being made yet - like this had happened once in Brazil. Don`t want this kind of restoring mess any more, one lesson should be enough.

But sorting out of the images was quite a job and to have a decent overview of the recorded material perhaps a month should be spent in Ushuaia. Which is not a bad idea as such as the climate is like spring or fall of Estonia, +3 to +15 degrees outside and sometimes it does not rain. Interesting things to get involved with can be found everywhere, starting with shorter and long hiking trails and the city`s architecture is also unique. And most important - no mosquitoes and no one asks when you're going to leave. Also no problem with the visa as officially the visa is valid for 90 days during a half - year.


March 6 at noon. A look back at Ushuaia. The weather was sunny and nice snowy mountain tops in the distance.

Antarctica, Day 9-11

The next two days, March 1 and 2 were spent on returning over the Drake Passage.

Seasickness pills helped so much to all that was eaten up nicely maintained inside as long as needed. But I felt a serious shortage of a decent safe - belt which would have been a great help of staying in bed, as occasionally two hands had to be used to have a strong grip of while holding on to the edges of the mattress.

And while going to have breakfast or just moving around there was one rule – one hand is for the ship. Fortunately there were enough means on in the lobbies of holding on.