Disembarkment to Santiago
We said goodbye to the MS Midnatsol this morning. It's been an awesome trip that I feel privileged to have experienced. I'll miss the pristine, surreal scenery, no noise or air pollution, never knowing what we'll see next. I'll miss the animals whose reaction, if any, to our intrusion in their environment is curiosity. I'll miss the international makeup of our fellow travelers and crew, focused on encountering our incredible natural world instead of squabbling over it. And I'll miss the hiatus from bombardment by breaking news cycles.
After clearing security, we boarded a bus for a 2 hour of Punta Arenas. It's Rosamaria's hometown, and she did a nice job presenting an overview of the history and highlights of the city. She also presented us each with a copy of a regional guidebook she researched and edited for the Chilean Antarctic Institute.
Punta Arenas was established as a frontier city and penal colony to establish a Chilean toehold in Patagonia on the Strait of Magellan in the 1840s. Now a city of 100,000, it maintains a unique status. Due to its remote location and as an incentive to its residents, citizens enjoy tax free status. With a history of settlers from all over the world, the Magellanic area has a strong regional independent spirit, and is one of only 2 regions of Chile to boost their own flag.
We visited the Municipal Cemetery, which has both traditional family and society mausoleums, and long walls of crypts. As with other cemeteries we've seen in South America, places can be rented by the year, in perpetuity, or for various terms in between. The diverse population which settled Punta Arenas is evident in the cemetery, where tombstones are in Spanish, English, Croatian, French, German, etc...sometimes varying within the same family plot
Karaoke angel
Next stop was an open air museum which contained 1:1 scale replicas of several historic wooden ships. These were fascinating, both because the ships themselves were impressive, and because we could climb down into the holds and up to the various decks on steep rickety steps without handholds. We needed to use our phones flashlight app to maneuver around the dark lower decks, where we were occasionally startled to stumble upon a dummy of a seaman lurking below. There were implements like axes and reproductions of 16th century pistols laying around like props. This unsupervised access would never have flown in the US. It's a negligence lawsuit waiting in the making. We loved it.
Having just had our own little encounter with a powerful storm on the open seas, it was hard to imagine taking these small wooden vessels, particularly the 1520s model, on a voyage of discovery. They must have been very brave, ambitious, and/or desperate. And at times, very scared.
Match the ship to the photo (no fair reading the names on the boats)
A. Magellan's Nao Victoria
B. The Beagle
C. Shackleton's James Caird
Next to the airport for our 3 1/2 hr flight to Santiago. We were happy to see Silvia's smiling face at the airport when we arrived, and look forward to having a couple more days with her.
We had a brief overview of Santiago from our local guide, Eduardo, during our drive to our hotel in the central district. Santiago is 80 miles from the Pacific at approximately the same latitude south as Los Angeles is north, and share many climate qualities with LA. It lies in a valley between two mountain ranges, with the Andes to the east and the coastal range to the west. Their summer weather is ideal, 80s during the day with low humidity, and cooler in the evenings, with no rain from December-March. About 6 million people, one third of Chile's population, live in the Santiago region.
It is very pleasant here, and comfortably warm after the last two weeks in polar seas. We had tapas and drinks with Kathy and Charley at the rooftop bar at our hotel, enjoying the sunset and the view over the infinity pool.
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