It´s COLD down here in the South. When I walked out of the last Internet cafe it was snowing in Ushuaia. Nothing settled underfoot and fortunately there was no wind. Conditions are about the same temperature here in Punta Arenas, and I think I saw a snowflake or two this morning.
Yesterday (Sunday) was election day in Argentina. A lot of shops were closed in Ushuaia`s main street in the morning but that may have been a normal Sunday. There were a few people standing around a school so I guess that was a polling station.
I was due to fly to Punta Arenas in Chile and I checked in early in case the flight was oversold. No need to bother. There were barely 30 people on the jet.
Naughty Chilean taxi drivers at Punta Arenas Airport tried to tell me the shuttle wouldn`t go at all and then wouldn´t go for at least an hour. I stood firm and saved myself 5,000 pesos. The shuttle dropped me in the plaza and I walked from there to my guidebook selection, Hostal O´Higgins. Almost the whole block was a building site. The hostal is now a hole in the ground. So that´s why the phone wasn`t answered!
My hike to second choice Hospedaje Independencia took me past a large statue of the heroic Bernardo O´Higgins. I think I must go and photograph it. His name cracks me up every time I come across it. He was one of the commanders – together with José de San Martín – of the military forces that freed Chile from Spanish rule in the Chilean War of Independence. For more information on him click here.
The lodging has proved very comfortable, and the owner, Eduardo, has been very helpful with travel information, so I´m well pleased with it.
I had been warned (thanks, Jack) that Punta Arenas was not a riveting tourist destination. Unless I want to do another penguin tour there´s not much on offer. One travel agency promotes birdwatching tours in the window but they have been scrapped for lack of takers. A regular historical tour is unlikely to go ahead tomorrow unless it can recruit minimum numbers. Eduardo had recommended a museum in town, but it is closed on Mondays. And today is ....
What I did manage to do, with Eduardo´s help, was book my passage on the ferry from Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt. This entails sacrificing my flight to Puerto Montt but it will be so much more interesting to see the Chilean fjords. The boat leaves on Friday morning but I have to check in on Thursday and spend the night aboard. Winds, tides, whirlpools, tsunamis and kraken permitting.
I also visited the cemetery. This was also Eduardo´s doing. There are some little houses for the dead as in Recoleta, Buenos Aires, but most plots are much more modest. There is an "English Section", where the epitaphs on the headstones are in English. The dearly departed are from all parts of the British Isles, with the Scots particularly well represented. There is a also a memorial to the crew of HMS Doterel, which exploded and sank near Punta Arenas on 26 April 1881.
The largest plot by far is devoted to the Braun-Menendez family, which became extremely wealthy and dominated Punta Arenas society. The Braun portion originated in Russia and Mauricio was Russia´s diplomatic representative until the 1917 revolution overthrew the Czar.
The most famous name I came across was Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee, victor of the Battle of Coronel. There is a large memorial tablet topped with an eagle. I´m not sure the black-painted shells are in good taste, though. I presume the admiral is not there in person since he was sunk at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in 1914.
My last lot of photos were downloaded to a DVD, despite my instruction to put them on a CD. This was done with good intentions. The photo shop thought they needed room for a full 2Gb memory card. The mix-up resulted in a disagreement about the correct fee for the service. That was resolved, but I have not yet visited an Internet cafe that can read the DVD.
The upshot is that all my recent posts are text only. Sorry. I will fix this when I can.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment