Moving from Puerto Natales to Punta Arenas was moving from a small tourist based town to a 200.000 inhabitants city with industry, harbour with feries etc. Found a cheap and very private B&B run by Iris – here for three nights before taking the ferry to Porvenir for the last stretch to Ushuaia.
Second day in Punta Arenas was as a tourist – first walking 5km into the city center to meet with Glenn at the motorcycle shop – it was a small but very nice shop with a mini museum and a cafe – so speaking with the owner for an hour before moving on and have some sights of the city.
Next moving out north of the city to Museo Nao Victoria – a maritime museum of re-build clones 1:1 of two vessels that form the history of this area – the Nao Victoria from 1520 with the famous captain Magellan and then the HMS Beagle from 1831 hosting Charles Darwin on his first RTW travel (as a junior geologist). Quite impressive rebuilds showing the (with our standards) poor living quarters for the sailors and officers.
The final day in Punta Arenas was spent driving further south about 80km from the city – to reach the final piece of road on the mainland of South America. Not the most southern road overall, but connected to Panama up north with no ferries. The outlook from the road is to the large islands south of the Magellan Strait and just behind the far mountain peaks is Ushuaia that I will reach in a couple of days.
I was a bit surpriced of the many fishing vessels on shore – all along the cost there were pulled up on safe ground, some being worked on and others just waiting …
