Punta Arenas

New photos are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/45804996@N03/

I went to a couple of lookout points indicated on the map the hotel gave me this morning, then went to the naval and maritime museum and after that the museo Braun-Menendez. Both were OK but not fantastically interesting.

After that I got something to eat and embarked on an epic quest to buy CR2032 button-cell batteries. My electronic Spanish-English dictionary is playing up and I'm fairly sure it need new batteries. I tried four camera/electronic/souvenir type shops and although they were very helpful and pointed me to the next shop in the chain, three of them didn't have any and if I understood correctly the fourth shop had a single battery, whereas I needed two. I then tried a supermarket but I couldn't see any batteries at all in there.

I didn't understand at the time (I just asked her to repeat, then pretended to understand, as is my wont) but I believe the woman in one shop advised me that I might get some in Zona Franca, which I realised on seeing a road sign is an area of the city. However, it is a fair old trek away from here and by the time I even knew what it was it was about 6pm, so I haven't been over there. The dictionary still works at the moment and I may be able to pick some up somewhere else. Surely this isn't such an obscure thing to want to buy, is it? It would have been better if it had happend yesterday as I suspect I could have got some more easily in Santiago, although maybe not.

After that I wandered down to the beach to take a look. The north end of the beach was virtually inaccessible to me, you can probably get there but there were just a few too many stray dogs hanging around and the whole area felt a bit desolate and run down. I made my way inland down towards the south end of the beach which was a lot more pleasant. The beach is very small but it was quite cool to watch the waves coming in, very different from Rio of course. :-) There is an incredibly exciting video of the beach mixed in with the photos I've uploaded.

I made a blog entry from my phone earlier to say I bought the bus tickets to go to Puerto Natales and back, but it hasn't appeared. I have open tickets so I have a nasty feeling I will be screwed if the buses are full, but we'll just have to see. A pair of tickets (there and back, 247km each way according to my guide book) cost exactly the same as I paid for the taxi journey from the airport to the hotel yesterday (19km). I know you can't exactly compare the two, but it's still annoying.

Having seen various ads around the place and also now remembering stuff in the guide book, I feel I really ought to take the chance to go and see some penguins while I'm here. I've checked and you can't really do that from Puerto Natales or Puerto Williams, so it has to be here. The problem is that I only have two more full days here, the day before I fly out to Puerto Williams and the day I come back, when I will probably be knackered from the ferry trip. With luck it should be possible to do something on the day before I go out to Puerto Williams. However, both days are Mondays so it's just possible there will be no tours on those days. I need to look into it but there is no enormous rush I suppose.

Plan for tonight is to go out and have a few drinks, ideally not where I went last night (partly on grounds of variety, partly of cost). I have to travel to Puerto Natales tomorrow but there are about seven buses a day so I can be a bit flexible with time. I 'have' to be up for breakfast at 10am tomorrow, so I guess I'll be out of the hotel by about 11-ish anyway. Ideally I will get to Puerto Natales not too late in the day, all other things considered, then I can go and book myself up for a tour of Torres del Paine ASAP and get the place off my mind. I have a suspicion the hotel does a tour or is affiliated with someone who does a tour (and even if I hadn't read anything, I would be mildly surprised to find a hotel there which doesn't tout someone's tour) so maybe I can book that up without even leaving the hotel.

Oh, I noticed several ads around the place for full-day tours to Torres del Paine from here. This makes me slightly peeved I am faffing around going to Puerto Natales for three nights. On the other hand, apart from fitting in the penguin thing it's not that fantastic being here (it's OK, but not amazing) so I might as well see somewhere else. Also, the tours leave at something like 6am if memory serves and get back about 11pm, which is vaguely plausible as it's something like 3-4h from here to Puerto Natales, and the park is probably further, so that full day tour includes 6+ hours of travel to/from the park. I might be messing around more, but at least my full day tour from Puerto Natales will either be a less gruelling day and/or have more time actually seeing stuff in the park.

Bit annoyed at those posts from my phone not working, the e-mails came through but the blog site seems to have ignored them. I may dredge them up and post them manually, although they really aren't worth it.