Punta Arenas

Day 14

Transfer by van to Punta Arenas. The Hotel Jose Nogueira is on the main square of the one time international austral cross roads of the world founded by Magellan in 1520. Until the Panama Canal opened in 1919, this was where peoples of the world docked as they circumnavigated the planet.

The architecture is French neo classical. The wifi works in the lobby! The restaurant is a glass covered greenhouse with grapevines growing in a beautiful interior arbor that seems to drop green stuff all over the table tops. Nobody minds.

Breakfast includes several choices of rich fruit pie, a triple layered dulce de leche cake, cup cakes, cookies, nuts, fruit in syrup, sugar coated cereal and plain yogurt. There is chese and ham. And you can ask for eggs!

A torrent of emails & downloads as we get in line with being on line again.  I start sending pix to family and posting stories on this blog. The laundry gets sorted for hotel maid who promises a noon return tomorrow. I buy some soap and get going in the sink. We string a shoelace across the window pane.

The Marita Restaurant is a delightful find. I have the zuccini and MP get the specialty of the house, King Crab.

We process what we have learned from such a trek: the focus, the use of energy, the commitment, and actually the sense of freedom.

We stop around the corner at the Megellan Museum, a beautiful home that still has the art and furniture of the family. We could be in Paris! Every room is filled with brocade, a collection of portraits, fans, sculpture. On one side of the grand foyer is a library for men, on the other is the sitting room for the ladies.

The Hotel is in the mansion that belonged to Sarah Braun who married Sr.N. They lived in a grand style, long gone, and had a greenhouse (on the left) where we ate our meals under grapevines. An exclusive Union Club is in the basement (see the orange sign). Entrance to the hotel is now on the other side street, but this was the entrance. We were on the third floor and kept our tall windows open with the breezes blowing in to dry the laundry we finally did in the sink.

Before the Panama Canal was opened, this city was the port of convenience for trade, including gold and oil and the wool trade from here. The buildings are beautiful especially around this main square.

The Catholic Church bishops took it to be their mission to  civilize the native people, documenting their building of the church a few blocks from the main square here on the wind swept penninsula. The museum is the Museo Regional Salesiano, the name of the order. thanks to their record keeping, there is a extensive  collection of artifacts from the tribes and first settlers leaving abundant documentation of the Yaghan and Ona peoples and the first explorers and frontiersmen. A mountaineer and priest named Agostini explored the region with steel cramp-ons, a pick ax and  heavy wool clothing. (Wrapped up in my down  and fleece, I can’t imagine how he did it).

The guide book doesn’t give this musuem enough credit! We left only an hour and a half, but I could have stayed much longer….before heading to the airport to fly thru Santiago back to Buenos Aires.  We glanced at the two rooms of Patagonian animal life (taxidermy) and touched on the exploration of Antarctica – both well documented as is the exploration of the ocean life, including large whale bones! The construction of the church grounds and the architect’s designs took up a large room. A video of the Pope visiting was the occassion to replace the white cross marking the farthest southern land point on the Chilean continent 90 Kilometers to the south.

Flag of Patagonia this is the regional flag flying out the window of our hotel

Statue to Magellan, the Portuguese explorer who made it around the world crossing these waters through the Straights in 1520 (approximately)

Contemporary monument in honor of the port – with dog sleeping in the lee of the terrific wind that blows all the time!

Closer pix of this huge cement and copper installation that was installed here Jan 2013

Southwestern side of the main square – this building used by the government.