We stopped briefly at a couple of places en route and the driver explained a bit, which I generally failed to comprehend, although I got about half of the gist.
In general all the bits of the island I saw looked much like the bit round Puerto Williams, to be honest.
There's a small naval outpost, as far as I understand, at Puerto Navarino, where two guys at a time stay for a year, with their families if they have them. As it happened, what I assume were the two guys currently there turned up while we were there. They were very friendly and talked to us a lot, I guess they probably know the tour operator. I couldn't understand most of what was said, though I console myself that listening to a group of native speakers talk among themselves is probably one of the trickiest parts of learning a language.
They took us up a surprisingly high (to me, I was puffing like a bastard halfway up) hill where they have a sort of look-out post across to Argentina. They pointed out the real location of the bit on the maps where the Chile-Argentina border makes a right angle, which was oddly interesting.
They have a tower up there with a camera on and invited us to climb up it. This was no 'ladder up the side' thing, it was a bit more hardcore than that, so I didn't do it, but the other guy did as did the tour operator. I like it here but I don't want to die here. Nice view from up there at the top of the hill all the same.
We saw a cruise liner going past (I believe they spoke to the captain by radio, but I could be wrong) and one of the navy guys mentioned about the views of the glaciers. I told him I was taking the ferry to Punta Arenas tomorrow and he said I would probably get a good view, also if I understood correctly that you see them about midday on the first day of the trip. That's good, it means I don't have to worry about oversleeping or something on the boat and missing the view. :-)
The guy only charged me CLP20,000 as I expected from this morning's call, which was good. I won't say it was fascinating but the bit at the naval outpost kind of place was quite cool and I expect I got at least as good a view as I might have if I'd gone up the trail I saw the other day.
I'm back at El Resto del Sur having a couple of beers, I already checked the guy can take me back to the hotel. I won't be out that late anyway as I need to pack (not a massive deal) and get ready for tomorrow. I just hope Maurice doesn't oversleep or something otherwise I'm screwed, but I'm sure it will be fine. I have to be at reception at 7am but I hope to be up by 6:30 to do the final bits of packing. (I may leave the laptop out overnight to try to get a few more photos uploaded, that sort of thing.)
Oh, when I paid the bill earlier they didn't charge me for the two beers I've had at the hotel bar. If I'd known it was a free bar I might have gone there more. :-) But probably not.
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