Activity Summary
Saturday 23rd December - Day 445
Drive to Punta Arenas airport
Drop hire car
Taxi to Punta Arenas
Sunday 24th December - Day 446
Parque Pingüino Rey tour
Ferry to Porvenir across Strait of Magellan
King penguins
Summary
Punta Arenas
The only activity of note here was the magellanic or king penguins. We opted for the latter and this ended up taking us to Tierra del Fuego and Parque Pingüino Rey which, in hindsight, probably should have been arranged from Ushuaia.
But the city split the journey of the full on TDP experience to Ushuaia. The penguin experience was stellar, despite being a long day.
Transport
Punta Arenas
Drive to Punta Arenas airport
Drop hire car
Taxi from airport to hostel (only option to get to Punta Arenas)
Accommodation
Punta Arenas - Haiken Hostel
Number of nights - 2
Price per night per person - £20
Positives:
Great breakfast spread
Comfortable rooms
Netflix on a wall mounted tv
Private bathroom
Quiet
Washer and dryer free to use
Negatives:
Bathroom was out of the hall with a key for access
Payment in USD cash only for tax free amount
Recommend?
Yes - the washer dryer addition made it completely worthwhile
Diary
Saturday 23rd December - Day 445
We were in no great rush to drop the car back at the airport (no problems with auto adjusted drop off times this time around) so were able to leave as late as possible and then head over to Punta Arenas airport.
The keys were left with the check in desk and were able to head off without a car damage check. As expected no problems arose in the days following so overall pretty happy with Mitta.
Getting to Punta Arenas from the airport was pretty annoying. No buses did pick ups (only to Puerto Natales) so we were forced to get a taxi. We failed to make use of the taxi desk inside the terminal which would have saved us a fair amount of money, having no choice but to go for the guy with the aggressive sales tactics and following us around. We got done on the meter and were rather unhappy by the time we arrived at our hostel.
The hostel would only accept payment without VAT if paying by USD in cash, as they apparently had no facility to charge foreign credit cards. At least we knew about this beforehand and given we are nearing the end of the trip, the decision to burn through our USD backup reserves was acceptable. Hate Chilean hostel booking payments.
What the hostel did have going for it was the in house washer and dryer, free to use. Using our own washing pods, our clothes haven’t smelt this fresh since being home and there was zero drama over lost items. Also saved a lot of money.
The hostel room was nice and comfortable so we Netflixed, chilled, cooked and prepped for our day tomorrow.
Sunday 24th December - Day 446
To do something slightly Christmassy we had a big day to visit Parque Pingüino Rey and see a King Penguin colony that had settled in Tierra Del Fuego in 2011. It would be a long day if travelling for it but King penguins, only second in size to Emperors, are pretty difficult to see outside of Antarctica.
Never a lie in in Patagonia. Pick up was for 7.30am and naturally they arrived early cutting our breakfast short. After collecting the various people for the tour, we didn’t say a word to anyone all day. We brought the average age down by some considerable merging and would just spend the entire day's travel plugged into an electronic device to pass the time.
The penguin colony was on the Chilean side of the Tierra del Fuego island. Having done the incredibly volatile Magellan Strait crossing twice in two days it potentially would have been better to do the tour from Ushuaia and have the ball ache of country border crossings but hindsight is a wonderful thing. Today we would have absolutely no problems.
The first ferry across was from the Punta Arenas port to Porvenir across the Strait of Magellan. It was pretty calm weather, having a whole lot of a worse experience going to Chaiten. Chilean Santa’s presence was pretty entertaining.
On the other side we had a gimmicky stop at Plaza Selk’nam that was an homage to the indigenous population pre-Europeans.
Without doing a whole lot except sit on our asses and travel it felt like lunch in Porvenir wasn’t particularly well earned. The school dinner vibe of a slab of meat and starch for CLP10k was greatly appreciated though.
After eating we had a short wander around the Porvenir sign, decorated appropriately with Christmas vibes.
It was a long drive to Parque Pingüino Rey and not overly interesting. The terrain is surprisingly flat and barren.
At the reserve we paid CLP15kpp entry, got a magnet and walked down the very windy walkway to the King penguin colony.
There were about 140 in the colony and about 50m away.
The guide was a maestro with a camera and the binoculars in the hut and ended up taking infinitely better pictures and videos than we could get after 30 minutes.
It was super cold in the viewing hut but that didn’t stop us being the last to be ushered out. Loved it.
The journey back to Punta Arenas was via the Punta Delgada crossing. Today we were in luck and waltzed straight onto a ferry and we’re across the pond pretty quickly.
Last of the gimmicky stops was to see a shipwreck and because we weren’t paying attention, we have absolutely no idea what the significance of it was.
Thankfully we were back for a decent time. This was despite the tour guide's decision to babysit a guy who hadn’t got any food for dinner and drove around for a while searching for a tienda. Seriously annoying and more so as we ended up dropping him off before us as well. Nicola rage quit the bus and walked instead of being dropped off.
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