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.


In the courtyard of a Hostel – with a parking lot on one side and a camp site on the other side. And the other relevant issues – they are : wifi and hot water.


Secondly - here is "Zona Franca" - one of the two free ports of Chile, which is actually a commercial campus of reasonable prices and large choice of goods - from cars to needles.

Thirdly - to buy a local Chile SIM card, or rather 2 cards - one for the phone and the other for the router, and it could be done so that I would go to a local telecom agency, buy the cards, pay for the purchase, put the phone card inside the phone and the second card into the router or netstick and everything would be functioning as it should. In practice it didn`t work out exactly this way - but having patience and persistence I could solve the problems. In the end both cards were usable.



The next morning I went to the car wash the as thick coat of mud had hidden the colour of the bus

 
It took some time but in the end white colour appeared.


Fortunately Punta Arenas is a small town of just the right size to take a walking tour almost anywhere.




In the downtown area.










Recently constructed shore.


Cormorants on a broken dock.


A Hotel by the coast of Magellan Strait.


And now some wall paintings.
















About the penguins too. Near Punta Arena there are two colonies of major Antarctic penguins . First - Seno Otway - where the road leads and secondly - Isla Magdalena - which is accessible only by boat.


I drove 65 kilometres to Seno Otway, but as it was almost autumn already there were only about 30 penguins "at home". And I was told by the personnel that the rest of the birds had swum to Brazil already.