Our Last Visit To Santiago Airport

Monday 12 February

We had to be up and packed, ready to leave the hotel at 07.30 for airport to fly to the very south of Chile. We changed up some more of our travelers cheques in reception (more significant later), before boarding one of the two group minibuses. The flight from Santiago to Punta Arenas would take five hours, with two half-hour stops on the way. The booking in process was fairly straight forward and we had a window seat as we understood that we would be flying over a magnificent landscape.

Looking out of the plane window, the scenery at first was the long line of Andean mountains – often snowcapped, with fabulous formations of ridges and valleys, which reached right down to the sea in places. As the plane flew further south the valleys became more and more remote until there was no habitation to be seen at all, and in fact many areas in this region have never been “discovered” by man.

The first stop, after just over two hours, was at Puerto Montt, a tourist centre - with lots of trekking, horseriding and mountain climbing – and half of the people on the plane disembarked. If we thought there would be more room from now on, we were wrong – it was filled to capacity when we took off again – mostly travelers like ourselves, heading for the southernmost town in Chile – a taking off point for Antarctica. The plane refueled (all those staying on board were asked to disconnect their seat belts – presumably for a quick get-away should there be a problem). We continued to watch the peaks of snow-covered volcanoes as we continued our flight, a couple with plumes of smoke rising from the craters – there are about sixty volcanoes that are still active in Chile. At times it was quite eerie as the cloud cover became quite dense and all you could see peering above were conical cones, with just their tops cut off, which were filled with snow and odd wisps of steam. When the cloud broke there were no signs of people or animals – no outlying shepherds huts or byres – just an unbroken landscape of mountains, gorges, valleys and off in the distance some very blue lakes. The second stop, an hour later, was several kilometres inland, on a wide green plain, where a few farmhouses sat the middle of swathes of green fields, and from the air the roads looked like small sandy tracks, connecting one property with the next, like one of those electric wire games where a buzzer goes off if you touch the loop. The small collection of houses and buildings here was known as Cochrane, and probably less than a dozen people got off the plane – a real outpost in the Chilean wilderness.

When we took off again, the scenery changed again, and we saw deep fjords meandering their way between the mountains, and into Argentina - the Chilean land here is just a very thin strip of mountains, gorges and fjords. We passed over the huge southern ice cap, with its many glaciers, like spokes from the centre of a wheel, still traveling down to the lakes and rivers, in large icy tongues. Many of the lakes had icebergs, some merely small specks of white, others like large patches of pure white floating on the deep blue water. We were so lucky the cloud cover cleared and allowed us such a clear view of this fabulous scene – Mike said he had never seen it so clear before. For another hour, those lucky enough to have a window seat, stared and gawped and snapped. We saw El Calafarte and its airport in the far distance, on the edge of a lake, actually in Argentina, a town we would be visiting in a few days time.

We arrived in Punta Arenas in the early afternoon, and it took about half an hour to drive to the hotel in the main town, which was much larger than we had all expected – a sprawling conglomeration of small houses, built around the bay, and now extending up into the hills behind, many of which were colourfully painted again – more left over paint from more ships? We were allocated our rooms and asked for passports – as usual – including our visas - only my visa was not in my passport now. I knew it had been there this morning when we changed up some money in the hotel, but somehow it seemed to have disappeared since then. My passport had only been in my waist bag since that time! Mike told us not to worry as he would go with us to the Police Station to report the loss and translate for us before we settled in – we would need a visa to leave the country. Once we were in our room, Colin checked the money that we had collected this morning, and there, in the middle of the 10,000 peso notes he found my visa! It was a great relief.

We set off to explore the town – there’s not a lot to see in Punta Arenas, but we climbed the hill from the main square to a viewpoint looking over the town and the port. There were two cruise ships docked – Insignia (could this be the same boat we are traveling on from Rio to Barcelona?) and a Regent ship – ready to sail to Antarctica tomorrow. We could see that many of the houses had lovingly tended gardens it can’t be that easy to grow roses and the like in a climate of continually cold buffeting winds from the Antarctic Ocean – but one was full of poppies that looked like huge pink carnation blooms and cottage garden flowers.

We made our way down to the harbour front and the “beach” where some people were sun bathing – and a few children were even paddling. Today was very warm in the sun for Punta Arenas – over 20 degrees – despite the weather forecast in the newspaper predicting just 12 degrees C. We walked along the stretch of gritty sand that was littered with rocks and rubbish, and had no appeal as a beach, to far end, before winding our way through some back streets to the town cemetery. We understood there was a tomb to the Unknown Indian here – a bit like the Unknown Soldier – as well as many graves of British soldiers and other explorers from the 19th century, when many ships circumnavigating the world passed through the Magellan straits and stopped off in Punta Arenas for shelter – but we didn’t actually find this part of the cemetery, although other more diligent detectives in our group did. There were huge mausoleums – ornately carved and decorated with fake flowers often set in fenced mini- gardens as well as the more modern version of what looked like open white wood lockers, each with their own memoriam. We wandered back to the hotel in time to shower and change for dinner.

Tonight Mike took us to a restaurant near the water front, run by a French trained chef named Hector (a common name in these parts – a bit like John at home). He offered us a set meal of king crab or artichoke soup with toasted almonds, rack of lamb chops or sea bass – both with mixed vegetables and a selection of three deserts to try – tiramisu, chocolate pudding with a runny chocolate centre (the best) and a peachy mousse. We had white wine tonight as I had chosen red for the last few weeks! It was an excellent meal, and wandering home it was still reasonably warm. We tried to find the Southern Cross in the sky but although we could see many twinkling specks in the black heavens, we could not identify the Southern Cross. Back at the hotel we collected our passports and made our way to bed. As we are not leaving till midday tomorrow, we can have another lay-in – it may be our last for a few weeks.