Day 4 (Feb 23) - Isla de Magdallanes

We woke up around 6 am to get ready for Isla de Magdallanes. Since the hotel offers breakfast from 7 - 10 am, we ate as soon as it opened and quickly gathered snacks and water for our trip.

We originally tried to catch the #15 collectivo, a car that delivers groups of people along a specific routes, in this case the port from which the ferry would depart: Tres Puentes. After about 15 minutes of trying to hail a collectivo (they were all full!), we decided to opt for a taxi. Fortunately the port was only about 5 km (10 minutes) away, so the taxi only costed about $3000 CLP ($4.34 USD).

We arrived at the port at 8:20 am, with plenty of time to spare before the 9 am departure. Once we departed, it took almost exactly 2 hours for us to arrive at the island. Penguins were everywhere!

Our vessel, the Melinka!

Isla de Magdalena from the ferry.

Isla de Magdalena with penguins!

Penguins!

The lighthouse at Isla de Magdalena.

Ducks with orange noses.

More penguins!

Penguins and the sky!

The penguins had little burrows in the ground like this one.

Penguins and kelp/seaweed!

Short clip of penguins waddling around.

Closeup of a penguin!

Penguins like hiding in little places like under this little shack.

After an hour of roaming with our penguin pals, we took the two hour ferry ride back and waited for a taxi. A foreign couple from the tour were going into downtown Punta Arenas near where we were going, so we split the taxi ride and walked the remaining few blocks back to the hotel to recharge.

That evening, we decided to go to one of the two restaurants about which we had read good reviews: Toques de la Patagonia and La Marmita. Around 5 pm, we went to Toques de la Patagonia, but it was closed between lunch and dinner, so we then walked to La Marmita only to discover that it too was closed between lunch and dinner. We ate some street empanadas and waited at Toques for it to open at 7:30 pm for dinner.

We had our first pisco sours (national drink of Chile) at the restaurant while we waited for them to officially open for dinner. Then I ordered salmon (forgot to take a picture!), and Sof ordered lamb. We tried the brownie with calafate mousse for dessert.

Toques de la Patagonia!

My first Pisco Sour, the national drink of Chile!

Sof's dinner: lamb (cordero) and potatoes and strawberry salsa!

Dessert: brownie and calafate mousse (calafate is a berry from Patagonia).

Day 3 (Feb 22) - Exploring Punta Arenas

The long travels from the previous two days apparently tired us a bit, because we slept for about 12 hours. When we finally woke up (in the afternoon), we decided we should probably grab some food, explore the city, and get information about visiting the Isla de Magdalena, the nearby island with many penguins.

Drawn by the sea breeze and sounds of the ocean, we first headed southeast toward the coast. We found several interesting statues and plazas along the way, and Sof used her Spanish expertise to get information on where to get tickets for Isla de Magdalena, when it departs, and where to catch it.

A cool church somewhere in Punta Arenas.

Statue of Monseñor Antonio Samore.

Another interesting building.

Dude with sword (celebrating Chilean Navy?).

Statues of boat people near the ocean!

Near the abandoned dock, some chess tables overlook the sea.

Statue of Captain General Bernardo Ohiggins.

Sof's favorite trees!

On our journey to buy tickets for the next day's journey to Isla de Magdalena, we stopped by a fútbol (soccer) themed restaurant called Estadio Cantina for lunch.

Sof and I ordered two different types of lomitos (sandwiches), which had beef, cheese, avocado/guacamole, and lettuce. Chileans seem to enjoy avocados on sandwiches, and we do too!

After eating lunch, we found the store selling tickets to Isla de Magdalena, and we purchased them for $35.000 CLP per person (about $50 USD with the current exchange rate of $695 CLP per USD). We then headed back toward the hotel to rest for a bit, passing the Plaza de Muñoz Gamero along the way.

Central statue of the Plaza de Muñoz Gamero.

Side view of central statue of the Plaza de Muñoz Gamero.

We also ran into a churro truck and got some churros to help us rest more effectively at the hotel! (4 churros = $1.500 CLP = $2.16 USD).

Churros! (Not sure what happened to my head in this picture)

We were pretty exhausted from our wanderings, so we ended up going to bed a bit early, knowing the next morning we'd need to wake up at 6 am to catch a taxi for our 9 am ferry ride to Isla de Magdalena!

Days 1 and 2 (Feb 20 - 21) - Travels from Seattle to Punta Arenas

Our travels began with a 9:45 am Uber ride that landed us at the airport around 10:30 am.

From there, we went on four flights from Seattle, USA to Punta Arenas, Chile:
Seattle -> Las Vegas
Las Vegas -> Houston
Houston -> Santiago
Santiago -> Punta Arenas

Sof and I on a plane!

View of Chile from the airplane!

Our 28 hours of travel finished when our taxi dropped us off at our Punta Arenas hotel at around 7:30 pm CLT.

A note of interest: As of January 2015, Chile no longer observes Daylight Saving Time (woohoo!). Thus, Chile is one hour ahead of EST in November - March, and two hours ahead in March - November.

By the time we got settled into our hotel, we were pretty exhausted, so we just ate at the closest place we could find: Lomito's. I got a churrasco (sandwich) and a vienesa (hot dog), and Sof got an hamburguesa con queso (cheeseburger). It probably wasn't very healthy, but it at least filled us up for the night. After so much traveling, falling asleep came quite easily!

Our first restaurant in Punta Arenas! This picture was taken the next day, hence the daylight.

Lessons learned:
1) The international arrivals in the Santiago airport are separate from the domestic flights, so leave several hours (at least 3) if flying domestically after arriving to Santiago internationally! We would have missed our flight to Punta Arenas if it hadn't been delayed 4 hours.
2) Security lines are short and super fast in Chilean airports. Something about not taking off shoes and removing arbitrary things from bags helped speed things along.
3) Vienesa = hot dog