Punta Arenas and Whales!

It’s New Year’s Day and we have gorgeous views flying north over tall Andean peaks. Glaciers with beautiful lines showing their movement presumably, snow so white it hurt my eyes in the sun - and interesting formations from wind, or maybe avalanches.. glacial lakes of various turquoise and blue colors. Icebergs, rivers... I doubt a human has touched every part of this vast area. This is by far the most beautiful flight we have ever been on.

We arrived in Punta Arenas Xmas Eve, and the main reason for going there was our excursion aboard a research ship, with the goal of seeing whales.
About 20 years ago local researchers found a channel in the Magellan Straits, where humpback whales return every year after their migration south. This is in a large archipelago off the Chilean coast, west of the southernmost tip of the Americas, Cape Froward (not a captain’s name, but synonyms include ‘obstinate, unmanageable, difficult’ - the winds are challenging rounding this point). I had read about the Francisco Coloane Marine Preserve almost a year ago, and kept talking about it...
These researchers formed a business (Whalesound), built a camp on an island, and help finance their research by taking us there. They have very nice and spacious dome tents, hot showers, and they feed you. We spent 3 days aboard the boat, and 2 nights on the island. We saw no other boats or tourists until we were heading back to Punta Arenas.

Link to Punta Arenas and Whales pictures!

And we saw lots of humpback whales! Had we known what we now know, we would schedule this trip in February when the whales have had a chance to eat and recover from their 2-month-long migration, during which they don’t eat. I can’t blame them for staying low, and not jumping for joy when they saw us now. But despite our timing, we saw many whales, close enough to see them also jump, without binoculars. These were maybe the younger ones.. the oldest whale they have a record of is 80 years old! Have included too many out of focus pictures.. but they show some of what we saw!

We were 9 passengers; Europeans and a local family, whose daughter is 16, and who wants to go to medical school. I enjoyed talking to them - they both work in tourism, and have traveled extensively. Their daughter admitted to having thrown a couple of rocks during a demonstration, and this family said everyone has been affected one way or another by the demonstrations. Public education is not adequate, and they are paying for a private school. You can go bankrupt also in Chile because of major medical problems.  Seems everyone agrees the country needs to change.
Downtown Punta Arenas many buildings were open for business, but boarded up. During our stay, we saw no other signs of the recent problems here.
The 30-something man who helped us with the car today, apologized for his limited English - and said they have eliminated French, and drastically cut back on English in schools over the past several years.

Just so we remember: all 9 of us passengers went out to dinner after returning to Punta Arenas. It was a nice evening, but Craig & I both felt their complaint-session was excessive. Our new local friends in tourism agreed safety on board, the food, and the knowledge of our guide could have been better without too much effort. I had also wondered why they have a European research assistant, in the country on a tourist visa, and why our guide was another young European woman. Seems these jobs would be ideal for a Chilean college student, or natural sciences grad student for a season at a time.
I never felt unsafe but was careful on board, where the crew was super helpful and friendly. I got vegetarian fare, we slept well and got to see whales. The weather was a mix of sunny & gorgeous, with strong winds only one day, and periods of rain all but the last day. Our brand name high tech clothes worked as they should - I was warm and dry! The fact we had a nice cabin with tea and coffee on board helped - but I spent way more time on deck, because what if there was a whale, or a dolphin..? And I had never seen Albatross and many other birds either.

I really hope these large boats will not be the future. They can injure the whales, and presumably too much traffic will disturb them, too.

In Punta Arenas we had a cottage about a meter from the owners’ own home. Their little back yard looks and smells wonderful - lots of flowers, and they tended to them daily. Craig noticed some 8 ‘Teddy Bars’ the first day we walked around the immediate neighborhood trying to find chocolate and wine. Now we know this is considered the red light district, but it is safe per our new local friend Sergio.
Downtown, a few blocks from our place, we did see more drunks than we have seen elsewhere on this trip. No one ever bothered us, and we saw local people going about their business. But even Craig said we probably shouldn’t be out late New Year’s Eve - which wasn’t our plan anyway. We were asleep around 10 pm I think.

We saw vegetable & fruit stands throughout downtown - and on Xmas Eve around 8 pm when we arrived, we bought our veggies from an older couple selling stuff out of their car not far from the bus station. He had spent almost a year in NYC and Boston in 1974, where he loved living on Comm Ave, and he would have liked to stay, but couldn’t get the proper papers. His English was still pretty good.
To me it was sad they had to work this hard at their age - especially as they were not farmers themselves.

Renting a car turned out to be a major headache. Craig had found a couple of parks outside town, and we had planned to drive there after the cruise. We walked into at least 5 car rental places in town, and no one had a car available immediately. Then we spent the majority of the following day on line, and on the phone & WhatsApp trying to find a car for Puerto Varas, where we now have arrived. This was Dec 31, so am not surprised people were not in their offices late. But at least 10 sites could not confirm the availability of a car even online for a few days later. They either were fully booked, or said one is to leave a message and they will get back to you in 48 hrs.

All worked out when suddenly Craig got a message from a rental company we had never seen online. They offered us a car, which they delivered to the airport we arrived at today. The company was founded in 2016 and some other company we must have left messages for, contacted them. Very helpful!
We plan to visit various parts of the Chilean Lake District until we return home in ~2 weeks. We are just west of Bariloche, still in Patagonia.