To the end of the world…and back again!
What can you do in 30 hours? Flying from Amsterdam to Lima and back, playing a cricket match, seeing the Lord of the rings trilogy three times, traveling from A to B with a delayed NS train and much more… But what did we do with those precious 30 hours? Right, the attentive reader guessed it, sitting on a bus. We endured this bus trip to Punta Arenas quite bravely, if we say so ourselves. 30 hours in a rather cramped bus with of course a whining child in front of us, an impressively wide range of “Jacky Chan” films pulled us through..
Thank god for Noodles at such a time!
Once in Punta Arenas (which is already referred to as Fin del Mundo, the end of the world) we travelled a little further south by boat to Porvenir, the capital of Fire Island (Tierra del Fuego). Well..it was disappointing; there’s really nothing to do!! No other tourists and we felt everyone was watching us from behind the shutters. Best of all, we visited four restaurants in our quest for a hot meal and they were all open but wouldn’t sell us any food. Thank god for Noodles at such a time! There was such a desolate atmosphere that we really had the feeling that we were at the end of the world.
The next day we tried to hitchhike to a king penguin colony (which are only found in Antarctica, but some got lost and ended up at ‘Tierra del Fuego’). Not that we didn’t see this coming… but no cars passed by. So, a little disappointed we sailed back to Punta Arenas, where our mood was lifted by a group of dolphins, swimming next to the boat while some albatrosses passed by!
We went further north from Punta Arenas, and celebrated Viola’s 25th birthday, in Puerto Natales, a nice day full of bitterballen, cheerful Croatians, pieces of cake and nice presents from Erik. The best present: we would go back to spot the wild group of king penguins! 😉
Although Viola’s birthday was of course a highlight, this is not the main reason we traveled to Puerto Natales, because that was one of the pearls of Patagonia, Torres del Paine. First we wandered around beautiful Torres for a few days until the weather didn’t allow it anymore and we were blown and washed away by the well-known Patagonian strong wind gusts.
In Argentina, el Calafate and el Chalten, we put our legs to the test for a few more days with beautiful walks to the Fitz Roy and surroundings. We also couldn’t miss the ridiculously beautiful and large glacier Perito Moreno, with cracking sounds from all sides and where huge pieces of ice break off right in front of you.
We booked a flight to Buenos Aires on Christmas Eve for economic reasons (just like we also fly back on New Year’s Eve) and we will fill the time in between with a road trip over Fire Island, with hopefully a visit to the penguin colony after all 😉 In Buenos Aires we will try the Argentine cuisine at Christmas (lots of meat, no gourmet set can compete with that ;)).
In any case, the Christmas mood is good here, hopefully you are ready for it too!
