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We’ve spent the last ten days exploring the southern reaches of Patagonia – a week in Ushuaia on the Argentine side and then a few days in Punta Arenas on the Chilean side. It’s a beautiful part of South America and covers a huge area, so we plan to also spend time a little farther north in Patagonia.

Ushuaia is the southernmost city in the world. There is a smaller village on the Chilean side that is further south called Puerto Williams, but it is too small to be considered a city. Ushuaia sits on a large island called Tierra del Fuego – named by Ferdinand Magellan because as he first sailed through what is now known as the Magellan Strait, there were fires along the shore that the indigenous people had for cooking and warmth. Much of Ushuaia’s and Punta Arenas’ history, once Europeans arrived, is based on the naval explorations in this part of the world and the expeditions to Antarctica – these are two of the five main departure points to Antarctica. The other three are Cape Town, South Africa; Hobart, Australia; and Christchurch, New Zealand.

Our first full day in Ushuaia was mainly getting our bearings and plans together. We did a run to different places in town and along the waterfront. Ushuaia is a very windy place, so we’ll be battling that during our outdoor activities – gusts to 40 and 50 miles per hour are not uncommon at all. One of our spots was the butcher so we could get a couple of steaks and some ground beef to make chili. The chili was dinner on Thursday night – we were excited to be back in an apartment and to have the ability to make meals at home.

On Friday, we did the Ushuaia City Bus Tour – a 75-minute narrated tour around the city. The bus was an added bonus with its own history. The buses were made around 1950 and they were in service in England for many years before retiring and eventually being purchased for use on these tours.

It was nice to learn about the history of the city and see various sites right in the downtown area and some residential areas on the western and northern side of the city. We made a stop at a hill overlooking the area and it was really windy – it must have been gusting close to 50 miles per hour.

We researched hiking trails and transportation out to the Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego. We knew our departure date from Ushuaia, so we also checked out the various bus companies that could get us up to Punta Arenas and bought our tickets for that trip. For our Valentine’s Day dinner, we made the steaks accompanied with baked potatoes and broccoli along with Argentinean red wine (malbec this time). For dessert, we walked to Gadget and had a couple of scoops of ice cream each. Fabricio was working and he was fun to talk to – he was listening to Linkin Park and I asked him if he knew Stabbing Westward music – he did not, so I got to introduce that to him. It was a fun Valentine’s Day at the end of the world.

It was rainy and windy on Saturday morning, so after eggs and toast for breakfast, we went by Uber first to drop Sandy off at a local gym and I went to the Museo Maritimo y Presidio. Sandy’s gym was going to cost nearly $50 for a day pass, so she ended up walking to another gym (the rain had stopped) and got in for $25. After her workout, she went for Starbucks time at Ana y Juana coffee shop and then went home to eat leftover spaghetti from earlier in the week.

I very much enjoyed my time at several museums. I spent four hours at the Maritimo y Presidio, which had lots of information on the maritime history in Ushuaia and also lots of information on the first prison, which is where the museum is now housed. They have taken almost all of the old cells and converted them to small rooms that provide information on those two topics. The museum also has a good section on the exploration of Antarctica and two art galleries – one that rotates with contemporary art from local artists and another that is filled with naval paintings.

After that museum, I went to the Museo fin del mundo – the end of the world museum, which was located in two buildings that were two blocks apart. The museum provides a nice overview of the city of Ushuaia. One of the buildings is the former government house – housed the governor’s office and the legislature for the province.

Sandy and I met in the evening at Dublin Irish Pub. I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, so I ordered basically chicken nuggets with barbeque sauce while I waited for Sandy to arrive. We wanted to try beer from Beagle Brewery (local to Ushuaia) and they had it on tap – we both liked their beers very much. Sandy snacked on popcorn and for dinner, she had delicious fish n chips and I had a sandwich that the server recommended – it was very much like a Philly cheesesteak except made with lamb meat instead of beef. It was huge and it was excellent.

Sunday was another rainy and windy day and it just felt like a day to stay in bed. So we did – until 1:40 in the afternoon. That was crazy. I have been trying to get caught back up on my X feed and the newspaper since we got off the cruise, so I was able to make good progress on those goals. We again had eggs and toast and then we had our normal Greek salads in the afternoon. I worked on our journal for Iguazu Falls and Sandy worked on our lodging for next week when we leave Ushuaia and for dinner, we enjoyed the other half of the chili that Sandy made on Thursday. For our after-dinner walk, we stopped at the bakery by our apartment and had chocolate alfajores – they were good, but a little drier than some of the best ones we have had.

We couldn’t stay in bed all day on Monday – we were off to the National Park. We walked into town and caught our shuttle to the park at 9am. They have ten or so well-marked trails in the park of varying lengths and difficulty. We opted for one of the longer ones and it was listed as moderate in difficulty.

With all the rain, spots of the Costera Trail were pretty muddy, but manageable. The trail follows the coast along Lapataia Bay. It was not very busy on the trail – we think we saw 10-15 people during the three-and-a-half hours of walking the five miles. The weather was good – a feels like of 40 degrees, which sounds colder than it feels when you are dressed properly and you are walking up and down hills. The air was very fresh – sometimes you’d get a sweet smell like when waffle cones are being made (and there were no ice cream shops around). The trail passes through forest with lots of tree roots to navigate, but it’s beautiful.

We ended our hike at Alakush restaurant and timed it perfectly – the rain started just as we walked through the parking lot to the restaurant. We both had grilled chicken, salads, and hot chocolates. Our shuttle to town picked us up from the restaurant right on time at 3:10pm and dropped us off on the road back into town that made for a shorter walk back to the apartment for us. I had recently finished reading Tom Clancy’s Patriot Games, so we watched that movie while Sandy did laundry. For dinner, we walked back to Marcopolo for the exact same meal we had our first day in Ushuaia – spinach gnocchi and fruit smoothies. The weather had improved and it was a really nice walk to and from the restaurant – sunny and 51 degrees with very little wind.

Tuesday was our last day in Ushuaia. We got another run in along the waterfront and then we walked to a small market called Sabrosisimo close to the apartment that we hadn’t seen. Too bad we found them on the last day. They had all kinds of prepared food options – we tried the chicken Milanese, spinach quiche, veggie quiche, and rice – everything was excellent. We decided the chicken Milanese was our favorite of the things we tried. We were due for blood pressure checks and a pharmacy directed us to a health clinic. We went there, waited a few minutes, they took our passport information, and then gave us the tests at no cost. It was a very friendly experience. From there, we went to the grocery store to get food for our bus trip tomorrow. Dinner was our Greek salads since we didn’t eat them for lunch and toast. I also had a little leftover steak from Friday night and some chocolate milk. We did our after dinner walk through the neighborhood and got ourselves packed and then to bed early.

Wednesday was moving day and it was an early start. Sandy finished her packing and made peanut butter and banana sandwiches for our bus ride. We ate cereal, finished washing the dishes and getting the garbage out and then got our Uber to the bus terminal at 6:15am. Sandy doesn’t like moving days very much so she whined about the work day she had ahead of her. Our bus left on time at 7am and they provided us with a bottle of water, a ham and cheese sandwich, and a chocolate snack. The first 90 minutes of the ride were beautiful as we passed through the mountains of Tierra del Fuego.

We made two stops to pick up passengers along the way in Argentina and then stopped for a few minutes before leaving Argentina for border control to notate that we were leaving the country and then a few minutes later, stopped at the Chile border to go through passport control and customs. That took about an hour as they are very strict about not allowing certain outside meats and produce into Chile. They searched our grocery bag and everything was fine. Once we left the mountains of Tierra del Fuego, the drive was relatively flat and we saw lots of sheep and guanaco. Guanaco are animals that are almost like a cross between a camel and a llama. At 3pm, we arrived at the ferry crossing of the Strait of Magellan. Unfortunately, it was very windy and the ferry had been paused. While we waited, we needed more food and bought sandwiches and chips from the small store at the ferry point. Each of us walked around occasionally – we didn’t want to leave our bags unattended so one of us always stayed in the bus while the other went out to walk around. The wind lightened a little and finally the driver was able to pull the bus onto the ferry at 6:20pm. We left at 6:30 for the 30-minute crossing. The rest of the ride was smooth, and we pulled into Punta Arenas at 9pm – about two hours late. Our AirBnB was only a six-minute walk from the bus station and the owner had left the key outside where we could still get in even with our late arrival. We settled in after a long day of travel. This apartment/house has a much older feel than some of the ones we have stayed in. It is clean, but Sandy’s feeling a little challenged with some of its aspects and we can look forward to a separate journal entry that will cover that.

Our first day in Punta Arenas was great. We had stopped here for a few hours during the cruise and we didn’t really have high expectations. It seemed fine – just more of a stopping point for a few days as we start to make our way through Chile. What we found was that, like Ushuaia, it is a very livable city. Much bigger than what we perceived with our short time here on the cruise. And that is a good lesson that we need to keep in mind when doing port stops on cruises. Spending a day somewhere is going to be very different from getting to spend more time in a place and that’s a bit of a reminder as to why we are traveling the way we are – to really get to know places since we have the time to be able to do so. For our workouts, I did a four-mile run along the waterfront and Sandy did the same route but she did a power walk. Afterward, we found La Marmita, a restaurant two minutes from our apartment and we absolutely loved it as soon as we walked in.

It’s family-owned and just has a really comfortable feel to it. The menu is not huge, but I wanted to try just about everything on it. For lunch, we each had salads, garlic soup, and I had apple juice with cinnamon. After lunch, we went to the bus station to get our tickets to our next stop after Punta Arenas and then met our AirBnB host – she arranged a tour to Magdalena Island for Friday. We then went to Unimarc and did our grocery shopping – just needed to get bananas and cereal for breakfasts. We liked La Marmita so much for lunch, why wouldn’t we go back for dinner? We both had traditional Chilean meals for dinner. We shared Charquican, which is made of mashed potatoes, corn, pumpkin, chickpeas, and green beans with cochayuyo (brown seaweed). The second dish we shared was grilled hake fish wrapped in tin foil.

After dinner, we looked at a couple of gyms because Sandy wants to do her weights at a gym while we are here and then we went up the hill on the west side of town for the excellent lookout over the city and the Strait of Magellan.

We wanted dessert so it was back to La Marmita to share chocolate cake and two flavors of ice cream – one was calafate (a berry local to this region) and the other was raspberry merengue. Like everything else at La Marmita – delicious!

Friday included one of the best experiences we have had along the way. That was in the afternoon, so first we had to get our workouts done. While Sandy went to the gym to do weights, I did a four-mile walk along the waterfront. The gym was much better priced here – only $8 and it had excellent equipment and not too crowded. This one was called Sportlife Bories. Lunch was back at La Marmita – still trying to get through the menu. I had fish ceviche and a guanaco burger with polenta and veggies. Sandy had a salad and meat with vegetables soup that is served with a hot stone inside to keep the soup hot. They also serve bread with hummus and salsa for each meal. We then walked to the port and explored the Mercado Municipal, which had seafood vendors, a restaurant, and several craft shops.

1:30pm was our meeting time for the tour that Ailyn (AirBnB) host arranged. They took us into the port terminal and we waited until around 2:15 to board our boat/ferry. It was a larger boat than we expected. Something must have been lost in translation because we thought the boat could only take four people, but there were around 75 or so of us onboard. We were perfectly fine with that. A boat that could only hold four people would have made for a quite a ride in the choppy waters of the Strait.

The ride to Magdalena Island took 90 minutes. As soon as we approached, we could see the tons of Magellanic Penguins and seagulls on the island. We were of course more interested in the penguins. The island has around 80,000 of them and it’s not a very big island at all – around one square mile. The tour takes the group on a well-marked path up to the lighthouse and then back down. You get close enough to the penguins that you can touch them although you are not allowed to do so. When they cross the path, they have the right of way, which is why sometimes you do end up closer than the guideline of staying six feet away. It was such a cool experience to get to walk around the island and see so many of them.

During our excursion, we saw penguins, seals, dolphins, and whales. On our tour, we were happy to get to meet Mathis, who serves in the Canadian navy. His ship is in Punta Arenas for a few days and they are in the process of taking Canadian scientists down to Antarctica. It was nice to talk with him and hear about his three years so far traveling the world with the navy. He was so kind as before we left, he gave us a pint of maple syrup that his family makes at their farm outside of Quebec City. We are looking forward to making French toast next weekend.

The boat arrived back into port at 7pm and we walked to La Luna. We had been here to eat centolla (crab meat) during our port day and Sandy remembered how good the beers looked. Since we didn’t have any then, we wanted to go back and try them today. Good decision. Sandy had another good plate of what was basically fish and chips and I had a tenderloin steak with mashed potatoes. Austral brewery is located here in Punta Arenas and labels itself as the southernmost brewery in the world. I am guessing that is not true anymore because Beagle Brewery in Ushuaia is further south. That doesn’t change how good the beers were. We tried three different beers that La Luna had on tap and they were all excellent. Our favorite of the three was Torres del Paine, a darker lager. The traditional lager and Calafate were the other two we tried. It was a great finish to a really great day.

And that brings us to today, Saturday, our last day in Punta Arenas. We went for Starbucks time at the Be Happy Café, just around the corner from the apartment. After reading for a while, we ordered veggie omelets and toast. Afterward, we walked past La Marmita and saw through the window our friend, Mathis enjoying lunch, so we stopped in and said hello to him and to the servers who have gotten to know us at La Marmita. They teased that they weren’t happy that we weren’t eating there today. During the afternoon, we put together an outline of how we plan to spend our time at our next stop a little further up the coast. Sandy went for a four-mile walk along the waterfront while I read. For dinner, we went back to La Luna but this time to the Cantina de Luna. Here, we tried two more Austral beers – the Yagan dark ale and Patagonia 508, which is a pale ale. Again, two very good beers, and now we think that the Patagonia 508 is our favorite of the five Austral beers we tried. To eat, I had chicken wings that were pretty good, and Sandy had a chicken burrito. That’s a wrap for Punta Arenas – tomorrow is another of Sandy’s favorites – moving day.