Punta Arenas

We took a local bus to the Museo Nao Victoria. It's always an adventure catching a local bus - finding the stop to get on, working out where to get off. Even though we knew to ask for Rio Seco our pronunciation foxed the driver. Luckily there was a sign Martin could point to. When the bus driver said "ah si, si, Rio Seco" it sounded very different to how we said it! He had a very old cash box and ticket system.

The museum has life size replicas of four ships/boats. The Beagle, the Ancud, the Victoria and the James Caird.

The Victoria was captained by Magellan who discovered the Magellan Straits. There are lots of statues of Magellan around the city including in the main square. You could go right down into the bowels of the ship and imagine the conditions the men lived in for the 3 years they were at sea.

The Beagle was much bigger and there were cabins with privys seemingly for the Captain and for Darwin.

I learnt that Shackleton spent some time in Punta Arenas planning the rescue of his men left on South Georgia. This is a replica of the lifeboat he and a few others arrived in.

Even Martin would baulk at being in the Southern Ocean in that!

After lunch in Magellan Square we went round the cemetery - very colourful with a lot of silk and plastic flowers and well tended tombs. We then walked up to the viewpoint to see the city with the Magellan Straits.

We spent a while with the Koreans in the evening then Samuel and Marcela joined us and poured us all some wine. Marcela has a list of what people round the world say when clinking glasses and there was great hilarity when we added "bottoms up". From L to R Guy, Marcela, Samuel, Elena and Hwan.

The Korean boys said they wanted to join us for breakfast before we left even though they didn't need to get up early.