Puerto Natales

After my complaint that Punta Arenas doesn´t do Mondays, my body decided to pretty near cancel Tuesday. I woke with a slight headache but walked that off going to the Silesian Museum. There was a lot of information there about the pre-European inhabitants of the far South and of the Silesian missionaries that came and infested the Magellan Strait area.

However, in amongst contributing to the demise of these cultures, some of the missionaries collected a lot of information about the geology, natural history and weather of the region. One of them, sorry, I´ve forgotten his name, seemed to spend more time mountaineering than evangelising.

In amongst the stuffed birds, old photographs and the reconstruction of a cave with prehistoric paintings ther was mush of interest but I found myself yawning and looking for somewhere to sit down.

My energy was briefly renewed by lunch. I tried a lomito, which turned out to be a steakburger, but of very superior quality, and shop fanta. Shop, schop or chopp is draught beer and Fanta is a well-known brand of orange-flavoured tooth-destroyer. Mix them together and you get the Punta Arenas speciality, shop fanta. In other words it is orangeade shandy. I had ordered it purely in a spirit of trying the local cuisine, no matter how awful it might be. In fact it wasn´t too bad. I wouldn´t cross the Pacific especially for another glass, but it was far from poisonous.

The original plan for the day was to spend the afternoon tramping in a forest park, but when I got back to the hostal for my boots I went to sleep. No power nap, either. I was out cold for over an hour and the headache had returned. So I spent the rest of the afternoon sipping hot water or weak tea. That and conversation with other hostellers finally pulled me round, to the extent that I declined the offer of a sandwich and went out for a solid dinner - conger eel. It was good, too.

Now thoroughly awake, I sat up chatting with Dan from California until about 1am.

By exercising superhuman discipline I answered the call of the alarm and got up in time to enjoy another of Eduardo´s breakfasts and still be in plenty of the time for the bus to Puerto Natales. The journey was pleasant. Patagonian steppe gave way to gently sloping woodland. The bus passed many birds, particularly rheas, upland geese, black-faced ibis and ducks. It arrived in good time. Buses in Bolivia are far more exciting.

It had been apparent from the bus that there was wind, but that´s normal for Patagonia. It wasn´t until I descended in Puerto Natales that I appreciated the force of the blast. In well regulated weather systems storms involve black clouds, lightening and drenching rain. In PN I experienced warm sunshine, welcome after the chill in Punta Arenas, in conjunction with gale force winds. This feels WRONG.

A saunter along the sea front risked being blown all the way to the Argentine border so I retreated to the local museum. This added to my knowledge of the original inhabitants of Patagonia and allowed me to inspect some small samples of the 13,000 year-old remains of a milodon, or giant sloth, discovered near here.

Then I gave up on sightseeing and spent the rest of the afternoon in the hostal. Luckily the room rate included Internet access and the machine could read my latest photo CD so I uploaded lots of pictures to my blog.

This morning the wind had not abated. The locals tell me this is quite normal for the time of year. I estimate that the wind is 50 knots, gusting to 70 knots. That´s a lot of wind. So I uploaded more pictures.

The ferry cum cruise ship is running late. It came into the sound this afternoon and turned around again because it was too windy to dock. I´m not surprised. I wouldn´t sail in this wind. The company blamed the Chilean navy, which controls the port, but if the captain thinks he can dock in winds like that he is either an awesomly good sailor or a reckless idiot. Anyway, the company is confident the wind will drop in the evening and has issued me with a boarding pass. We shall see.

If I do go aboard, it will very likely be several days before I get on-line again. Do not assume that silence means the vessel has foundered with all hands. I have plenty of space on my memory card and a good supply of batteries. With a modicum of luck I will have cause to take many photographs.