Punta Arenas

Wandering Albatross, Salesian Museum

Punta Arenas (Sandy Point) is the southern most city on the mainland and is just off the Strait of Magellan. The geography here is a little confusing. We’re in Chile, but this city faces East, not West. Across the strait is Useless Bay, which has over 100 shipwrecks. Ships that took shelter find that they often hit bottom, hence the name: useless. We toured the Salesian Museum, which gives a lot of information on the region. There are four distinct natural areas here: the pampas, which were settled by farmers/ranchers, the forest areas in the Andes, settled by hunter/gatherers, and the seacoast, settled by fishers/divers who lived their life in a canoe, and finally, Tierra del Fuego, with the Patagau people. The museum also displayed the penguins, birds, and animals of Patagonia. Finally, we had displays on the key industries here: whaling and the sheep. We visited the local cemetery focusing on the Grave of Jose Menendez, who was born poor in Spain, but became a rancher making his fortune from sheep here. Today, the family is still the richest in South America. The cypress trees make for an imposing sight throughout the cemetery. 



We had lunch on a sheep station. They have 7000 sheep, a small station. After lunch, we had a demonstration of sheep shearing. The shearer maintains control of the sheep by keeping it off balance. He sheared the sheep in about 5 minutes, yielding about $20 worth the wool. 

Fort Bulnes

We then headed to Fort Bulnes, the southern most point of the mainland and the place where Chili claimed this part of Patagonia in 1843. They landed one day before a French ship landed, and the French yielded to their claim. They have built a re-creation of the Fort including the stables, church, watch tower, barracks, and jail. Eventually, the settlement moved to Punta Arenas, because the weather proved too extreme on this point. It was a forested area because it was higher than everywhere else. Here we saw a tree unique to Patagonia, the Arokera Anokano, related to the Monkey tree.


We returned to the city to visit the central square with its statue of Magellan and a viewpoint above the city before heading back to the ship. We were exhausted - this proved to be an 8 hour tour. We had pizza, ribs, and a hamburger on the Lido deck since we were too late for our early-sitting dinner.