Patagonia January 2011: Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales - Chilean cities at the end of the world!

The flag in the pic above is the flag of Magallenes, the southerly most province of Chile in the heart of Patagonia, and includes the large island shared with Argentina, Tierra del Fuego, other smaller Chilean islands in the Magellan Strait, and Chilean Argentinian territory. The capital of Magallenes is a city called Punta Arenas, which grew up around Patagonian sheep farming and other related activities, started by entrepreneurial pioneers like Mauricio Braun in the late 19th century. After spending some time in Argentinian Patagonia, we spent a few days in and around this city here at the end of the world, then moved up to Puerto Natales, the major port of southern Patagonia - from where we visited the amazing Torres del Paine and caught the great fun cargo and passenger ferry, Navimag, back up to Puerto Montt.

This post is the last of our January travels posts, and has links to galleries of photos on the Torres del Paine National Park, and the journey on Navimag through the pristine, almost completely uninhabited, Patagonian fjords. 

view onto Punta Arenas and the Magellan Strait

one of the old cargo piers in the Magellan Strait

height of summer in Patagonia - sunny, but cold wind and rain is always round the corner!

trolley tracks coming off the pier into one of the quayside warehouses

the quayside buildings give an idea of how prosperous and busy PA used to be

Some views inside the Braun family home - now a museum - another grand home of an immigrant done good, reminiscent of Casa Anwandter in Valdivia:

The phone in the pic above is an Eriksson, which is a nice bit of living history. Oddly, Chileans use the Spanish "Hola" when greeting people face to face, but something like the English "Hello" (actually more like "'alo" now) when answering the phone. We don't know why they do this or if the same thing occurs in other Spanish-speaking countries, but our theory is that, going back to British colonial times, probably the first people to speak on phones were English speakers. So saying "hello" became the way to answer the phone. Maybe.

below stairs

One of the trips you can take out of Punta Arenas is to visit two archaeological sites: Puerto Hambre (rendered in English as Port Famine) and Fuerte Bulnes (a Chilean fort).  Nothing now remains of Puerto Hambre, it's the site of an early conquistador fort intended to thwart Drake's privateering. 300 Spanish settled here in 1584 and all soon died of hunger as they couldn't grow any food in the harsh Patagonian climate. Fittingly when we visited the monument it was absolutely lashing with rain, which really made clear how unpleasant it must have been to live here back then.

fishing boats moored off the site of Port Famine

Fuerte Bulnes was founded in 1843 a few years after Chilean independence and was essentially the Chilean stake on its claim to what is now Chilean Patagonia - presumably because Argentina also had a claim. Again, it cannot have been fun living in the wooden buildings here, really not.

To another historical site, another of South America's amazing cemeteries, the cemetery at Punta Arenas:

Now a few more pics around Punta Arenas, before moving up to Puerto Natales:

lots of red brick in Punta Arenas, quite different from other parts of Chile

another piece of Punta Arenas history, Chalet Milward named for the British Consul Charlie Milward ...

... who lived in this mock-castle and put Ernest Shackleton up during his Antarctic exploration

plenty of sun and even more rain make for some lovely flora down here

pastels (pies) of any sort are the thing to eat to stay warm down here

nice husky type dog

Puerto Natales has a similar feel to Punta Arenas, though it's smaller and, because it's the main jump-off point for visits to Torres del Paine, has more of a ski resort/ climbing/ general adventure sports town feel about it. It also has an excellent range of places to eat, drink and chill out.

a great pizza place, can't remember the name but it's opposite the church...

The Living Room we think... anyway also near the church with v good coffee and atmos

Just a few random pics around the city:

another of those evocative ruined cargo piers

All of the street signs in Puerto Natales have this little picture on. It's not immediately obvious but it's a representation of the Milodon, a gigantic prehistoric sloth-like creature which was discovered (frozen) in a large cave near PN that you can visit. This sign is doubly interesting because this particular street is named for one of the very first German settlers of the region - a large picture of him looking beardy and scary with his Mapuche wife and children can be seen in the museum in Punta Arenas we mentioned above.

view looking out of the Milodon's cave

inside the Milodon's cave

Struan with the model Milodon

As we've mentioned before, we spent some time in the Parque Nacional Torres del Paine while we were down here. This is a world famous trekking destination, very well set-up for both the hardened and "gentleman" hiker. Here's a gallery of our pics.

Then we went to catch the Navimag, a cargo ferry serving the south of Chile, with a converted passenger deck.

livestock transport

the cows that came with us on the journey back up to Puerto Montt!

the majestic Navimag ferry

the Evangelistas up close

This journey through the Patagonian fjords was an amazing part of our January travels, a real highlight, beautiful scenery and lots of fun people on the ship, here are some pics...

a taster ...

That's the last of our more detailed posts from our trip down to Southern Patagonia through all sorts of interesting places, we hope you enjoyed these posts!

... and we'll end with a comedy array of dogs of all shapes and sizes, congregating in Puerto Natales for who knows what... chao!