I was walking the seafront in Punta Arenas and I came across this monument. It’s a celebration of the first Chileans brought to this shore by ship to claim sovereignty of the Straits.
We saw this model at Fort Bulnes in yesterdays post.
And then we saw a re-creation of the Ancud sitting on a beach at an outdoor museum just north of Punta Arenas. So despite my protestations that this isn’t a tourist town it does have touristy things worth seeing. At least I think so.
We’ve been in Punta Arenas a week and we’ve figured out how to make this “non tourist” town work for us because there isn’t any kind of infrastructure to support overlanders who are a rare subset of the tourist industry. You’ll see backpackers and tourists all over town on their way to and from Antartica and Patagonia so there are lots of hotels hostels and restaurants.
In our week here in Punta Arenas, we have managed to unravel one of the city’s tightly held secrets: street parking. There are these characters all over town in high viz clothing wandering the streets:
He’s a parking attendant and when you park on the street he’ll note your tag and charge you a fee when you leave. The rate seems arbitrary and isn’t posted anywhere which means we’ve paid a few hundred pesos for quick stops up to a few thousand including one asshole near the market who demanded ten bucks. Make a scene or smile and never go back to his patch? Slightly weird as a system but it works more or less. Above his head you’ll notice a blue parking sign marked with the word “concesionado” which means it’s pay parking. Now you know.
This spot cost us $3 for two hours while we went to lunch at the market and shopped at Unimarc.
Punta Arenas is a city founded by European immigrants and even today you’ll see lots of gabled buildings that look like they belong in Paris which gives the city a very continental air. The big white arrows on the street signs point to the direction of travel which is helpful but right of way is often confused with stop and yield signs not always clear. Every intersection is a crap shoot and locals get pissed if you hesitate when you have priority.
So, what about the grocery shopping overlanders have to contend with, and you know it ain’t easy… We were warned about remote Patagonia but we find it to be rather like Key West used to be, when you had to know what day the vegetable trucks cane to town. In a region where everything is shipped from the mainland supplies come and go so if you hit the stores correctly the bananas are ripe she the broccoli is fresh. There is a Lider (Walmart) in town but Unimarc is the popular store in Patagonia though Layne rates it as just okay. Jumbo, her favorite chain stops at Puerto Montt far to the north.
So we food shopped at Unimarc and around the corner we went to lunch at the city market which in Chile is clean and tidy and about as ethnic as anything else in Chile which is not at all ethnic! The markets of the Andes with colorful natives and women in bowler hats and piles of produce on the sidewalk belong in Peru and Bolivia, not here. But they do have Coke Zero in glass bottles, that’s a first.
And I had hake (“merluzza”) and chips with egg on top. Also a first and not bad at all; it was like breakfast for lunch.
The market offers cheap lunches but not that cheap as this is Chile so around twelve dollars a plate. But we were busy with more work to do this time for Rusty. We had found a vet in iOverlander who in 2017 used to do health certificates for pets to cross the border to Argentina.
Of course no traveler has updated the app and that one was closed and gone so I resorted to Google Maps and found Vete Pet who did the paperwork for a very modest $18. And then I noted them in iOverlander for future travelers, as you do.
We had to take Rusty in and he as usual was not excited but he was found to be healthy and he took his anti-parasite medicine like a champ and we were done with an official piece of paper to prove it all for the office of agriculture, our next stop.
So we drove to the Federal Building which looked to me like Cruella deVille’s castle, and on the second floor a very nice government vet Don César, at the agriculture office called SAG rather amusingly to an English speaker, checked the papers and said come back tomorrow for your dog’s exit certificate.
So we did and for $11 we got a certificate which should allow Rusty to cross back and forth between Argentina and Chile for the next 60 days with no more paperwork. That would be nice.
Layne naturally had some catching up to do with a friend she had made in the ferry from Puerto Montt so I dropped her off at a coffee shop and Rusty and I spent a couple of happy hours on the beach near the Magellan monument. This must be why the city is called Sandy Point:
I confess I really do enjoy the freedom of Latin America taking my dog with me to the beach just hanging out in the sun with no one wigging out about leashes and stuff. I know many dog owners are assholes and don’t pick up and so on but there is liberation to be found here especially if you behave yourself. The big orange Astrolabe on the waterfront is the Magellan monument.
This below is once again the Ancud monument reminding us being a sailor isn’t always easy either. I have gained new appreciation for Webb Chiles the first American to sail alone around Cape Horn just four hundred miles south of here. And he did it in a leaky boat; I find it hard in a comfortable van being this far south.
GANNET2 however is quite large compared to more economical local transport even though she would be dwarfed by Magellan’s flagship, the 120 foot Trinidad.
The black box below is a public trash can and that’s where we dump our trash. There are public trash cans all over town and lacking the usual campground facilities it’s where we put our trash. Making overlanding work in Punta Arenas, city without organized camping.
So we have not found a proper campsite in the city but we have found a very pleasant park twenty minutes up the coast where we can overnight for free.
There are vault toilets which are disgusting to use but are perfect to dump our porta potty. That’s all to the good.
We don’t need to plug in luckily as our solar panels are going gang busters even on overcast days and driving around our alternator is keeping our batteries charged. Good so far. Trash we have solved obviously so our last issue is how do we shower without hot water in GANNET2 and no proper campground? Enter Backpacker’s Paradise Hostel found on iOverlander:
Five bucks apiece for hot showers bring your own towels and soaps. Perfect. More French architecture downtown:
And that is more or less how we make the city with no interest in vehicle campers work for us. We’ve seen others in vehicles from Europe Argentina Brazil and Uruguay around town and many like to camp right on the waterfront but we like the park up the highway far from the waterfront madding crowd.
The big rings are campfire pits with built in seating and there are picnic tables and the vault toilets are scattered around.
Rusty likes the abundance of grass of course and we like the quiet of weekdays camped outside the city.
The trees don’t give much wind protection but we’ve been lucky with the weather with limited rain and lots of sunshine with bursts of strong winds gusting through. We can see out over the straits walking through the Chabunco Park.
And that is the life of an overlander, making do with what we find. I’ve read Ushuaia has quite a few campgrounds but some people park at the airport. I look forward to finding out more when we reach our goal.
