The trip to Punta Arenas (PA) was filled with a lot of unexpected curve balls. First of all, before even going to PA we had a dilemma with purchasing the plane tickets. There were 4 of us in all traveling: my friends Susan, Hannah and Emily and myself (I know, lucky guy traveling with 3 girls! Bound to happen when there’s 22 girls and only 6 guys in our group) Susan is our designated travel agent and she was the first to buy her ticket. I tried to buy the same roundtrip ticket she had through airline “A” a couple weeks later but discovered the return flight was full. So I bought a one-way ticket going to PA on the same flight through airline “A” and a return ticket through a different airline, let’s call it airline “B.” Hannah and Emily bought roundtrip tickets through a completely different airline.
Anyways, long story short, airline A went out of business so airline B took responsibility for airline A’s flights. So, Susan and I ended up having our flight to PA changed from 8:00 in the morning to 10:30—ate away at part of the day but not a big deal. The bigger problem was the return flight. Since I had already bought my return ticket through airline B, nothing was changed with my flight. But the return flight Susan had (the original roundtrip ticket through airline “A”) did get changed and she ended up (supposedly) on the same flight as me going home. When we got to the check-in counter however, we realized that this wasn’t the case because her flight somehow didn’t get confirmed. The lady told us that there was no room and she would have to wait until the next day to fly out. This was a bit of a problem since Hannah and I had our flights all set to leave that afternoon (Emily left PA a day earlier). We talked to the lady at the counter in Spanish to see if there was any other option but she said the only option was to go on the next day’s flight, which was at 9pm, which means that it would be too late to get a bus back to Vina from Santiago when the flight arrived at around midnight. I even asked about changing my ticket to the following day so there would at least be 2 of us together but there were only high class seats left so it would have been uber expensive.
We ended up having to board our flights leaving Susan at the PA airport by herself in tears. Hannah and I felt terrible! We were planning on spending Monday in Santiago since we didn’t have class due to a national holiday, but when Hannah and I met up in the Santiago airport we just decided to get a taxi to the bus station and take a bus back to Vina after all that had happened. Susan went back to the hostel that we were at in PA (fortunately it was a pretty sweet hostel, keep reading to hear why) and spent another night there. Now we are all safely back in Vina, thank God.
I don’t want to make it sound like the trip sucked, because I actually really liked it. It’s just the whole airline issue part was pretty lame. The first 2 nights (Tuesday and Wednesday) we spent in Puerto Natales, a city about 3 hours from Punta Arenas. Susan and I were travel companions the whole way there since we had the same flight. We had to take off and land 3 times because of two stopovers on the way to PA, the southern most city in the world apparently. Then we had to take a 3-hour bus to Puerto Natales where our hostel was (Hospedaje Maria)—Maria even came to meet us at the bus drop-off point. Emily and Hannah were already at the hostel. We were pretty wiped out from traveling so we all just went and got some dinner and went back to the hostel.
I was surprised how late it was when the sun finally went down—around 10:30 or so. PA is like 53 degrees south, so it’s farther south than Minnesota is north (MN is about 45 degrees). The first full day in Puerto Natales we went to Torres del Paine national park. We had an option to do a full day hike to the top of the Torres (towers) or do a drive around tour from below. I pushed to do the day hike to the top, even though I think some of the girls may have rather done the drive around tour (not to name any names COUGH COUGH, Susan and Hannah). I give them credit for going on it with me though. Emily was at the other end of the spectrum—I had to work hard to keep up with her. The hike to the top was almost 4 hours and then another 4 hours back to the bottom. I thought the view was totally worth it, except we didn’t get to stay up there very long because we had to make sure we made it down in time to catch the bus back to town, since we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere.
At the top the climb got rougher and rockier. Hannah decided she had enough about half way up the rocky part and found a rocky seat where she waited until we came back down. Susan and I kept going while Emily was ahead of us almost out of our site. We found out that Susan’s the accident prone one in the group; she endured a few minor injuries during the expedition. We took the bus back to Puerto Natales and went to a Pizza place where we met some Australians. We each ate an entire pizza, and they were fairly generous portions!
The next day, Thursday, we left our hostel in Puerto Natales and bussed it back to PA. Before catching the bus to PA however, the girls (minus Hannah who stayed back at the hostel) made me go shopping with them. Well, they didn’t so much as make me, as much as there really wasn’t anything else to do so I just went with. I’m not going to complain because they came with to Torres del Paine without fuss, so I’m just going to zip it! The hostel that we had in PA was more like a house with extra rooms than a hostel. It was run by this older woman and she lived there (she wasn’t really old, just old to me—like 60’s). The first night we were there we met these other two travelers: one from San Diego and the other from Boston. They accompanied us on the tour to see the penguins on Friday. On Friday in the morning we went on a historical tour and saw a reconstructed military fort and some other stuff. It was kind of relaxing compared to Torres del Paine, but I thought it was kind of boring. After the tour we had lunch in PA and then went on a tour to see the penguins with our new hostel friends. These were the Magallanes penguins (I saw the Humbolt penguins when I went to La Serena in the north). They were in a natural habitat and there was a path constructed for viewing. It was super windy too. After the tour we went with our hostel friends to a Chinese/international food buffet.
The next day, Saturday, Emily left in the morning and the 3 of us slept in and went to the centro, or the main plaza with our hostel friends in the afternoon. We got some lunch and then our friends had to leave for the airport. We went back to the hostel and relaxed for a while. Saturday was also Susan’s birthday, so we went out eat at another Chinese place for dinner. We tried to rent a movie afterwards, but they wouldn’t rent to us because we didn’t have a local address. It worked out OK though because we had some free entertainment back at the hostel. It ended up that this woman’s family came to visit from Argentina, including two ten-year-old twin grandkids and they were fun to have around. They entertained us with these little puppets and then they came into our room and got into our cereal and we somehow ended up having a sort of a contest to see who could catch the most cereal in their mouth and in the process made kind of a mess. They were up until about midnight and then their mom made them go to bed.
The following afternoon, Sunday, was when we were all supposed to leave PA. Once again the twins were our entertainment. I brought out my camera to take some photos and I let them have it for a little while. They had fun making goofy videos. We also had a pillow fight until their mom put a stop to that. I may or may not have been the culprit there.
Susan, Hannah and I took a taxi to the airport and that’s when that whole drama began.
This week we’re finishing up classes—have some papers to write but it’s so damn nice out I have 0 motivation! Friday the 12th is officially the last day of classes, but I don’t have class on Fridays so I’m done on Thursday. I’m leaving for Buenos Aires Argentina Friday and I’m excited! Come back to Vina the 18th and then my flight home leaves the 22nd. It’s going too fast! I’ll see everyone very soon!
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