Punta Arenas - January 6th

Today the alarm went off at 04:10 as we had to be up for our 05:00 bus to Punta Arenas in Chile.  Despite the early hour it is still bright when we get up, as it was when we went to bed at 10:30 last night.  In fact we have never seen Ushuaia in the dark because of the long days at this time of year.  The initial leg of our journey is to the other big town on the island, Rio Grande.  This 3 hour leg is characterised by the fact that the bus is freezing.  Really cold.  Despite the fact that we are wrapped up warm in preparation for such a possibility, our feet are really suffering.  But there isn’t that much we can do about it.

When we get to Rio Grande the bus station is chaotic.  It turns out you have to fill in all your border paperwork here.  Why they didn’t give it to us to fill in on the bus is a mystery.  But there are queues everywhere, most of which contain people who don’t even know why they are queuing.  A few instructional posters would have been nice.  Adding to the confusion is that there are so many people travelling they have put on a second bus, and therefore old seat numbers no longer apply.

Once we get underway the rest of the journey is pretty ordinary, the scenery out the window is the same all the time.  It is sort of like travelling through the world’s largest links golf course.  The Argentinean border is a quick stop, but the Chilean one is painfully slow.  There are a couple of buses ahead of us, and it takes over an hour to do them.  When they get to us three of our fellow travellers haven’t read the rules about importing fruit into Chile, and get caught, so our bus gets delayed another hour for them to fill out extra paperwork.  It’s very frustrating.  I can’t understand how people can ignore the posters on the wall.

For the rest of the journey again the landscape is the same, save for the 15 minutes when we cross the Straits of Magellan on a little ferry.  It’s a welcome break.  We finally reach Punta Arenas at 20:00, and after quickly checking into our hostel, we head for some food.  And here we find an amazingly good French influenced restaurant.  We finish eating at about 22:30, and head to bed, although it is still bright outside.  This probably explains why there were still people only arriving into the restaurant at that time.  The lateness at which people eat here is something we still have to get used to.