Patagonia - Chile - Punta Arens and the Journey North.

We landed back in Punta Arenas around 2300 hrs, tired but satisfied we have savoured the delights of the national parks, albeit briefly.

We stayed at a lovely B&B, with Lorena and Dan, who are the only people we've met who have a home at either end of the American continent, (one in Alaska and one in Patagonia. Check out their B&B (Tragaluz).

We booked some more tours...

our visit to the Humedal de Tres Puentes wetlands to see some birds...Chiloe wigeon...

Upland geese, 3 males closing in on a female....

Chiloe wigeon again...

Upland Goose

There is a local organisation Agropacion Ecologica Patagonica (check out the link for the tours and links to the organisation Shakoa Tours). Thanks Sebastian for a great morning at Tres Puentes.

For those of you of a nervous disposition, heres an ugly bug...

...the very ugly cabello de monte..

After the wetlands we visited Port famine and Fuerte Bulnes and the promontory that it sits on...

fishing boats moored at Buena Bay...

Port Famine was named by an English sea captain Thomas Cavendish, who landed here in 1587. He found a fort that had been built by the Spanish 3 years earlier( in1584). Commisioned by King Filip the second of Spain, and assigned to Pedro de Sarmiento de Gamboa, Sarmiento constructed a fine fort to accomodate 300 souls (La Ciudad de Rey Don Filipe) and a Bulwark on the promontory to protect the land and the straits form the privateers of the british navy (e.g. Cavendish). The 300 settlers were ill equiped with food, weapons, and knowledge of the land to survive. They were unsupported for three years and when Cavendish arrived he found one survivor and human remains strewn around the fort. The settlers had endured starvation and severe cold, and eventually law and order broke down. So Cavendish renamed it Port Famine.

Modern monument dedicated to the original Spanish settlers ("la Ciudad de Rey Don Filipe") 300 of whom perished in less than 3 years after Pedro de Sarmiento founded the settlement in 1584.

peaceful and quiet now....

..beech woods,    this could be Britain...

...some bigger beech trees...

,,,the reconstructed Fuerte Bulnes...Originally built in 1843 to protect the Straits... for Chile.

Some of the smaller structures were constructed with turf walls

whilst other are posher being crafted out of wood...

...a fine view over the promontory...

So our final day in Punta was a very full morning followed by an excellent filete a la pobre (steak - big, two fried eggs, fried onions, and of course chips) in a non to salubrious cafe (which turned out to be rather better than it looked) with two large beers. Then a bottle of vino tinto back at our last hostal Imago Mundi, with cheese and crackers, as we update the blog.

Tomorrow we catch the 10:50 hrs flight to Santiago from Punta Arenas, and the day after that we set off for....... Isla de Pascua, or Easter Island or Rapa Nui.