We spent Saturday morning at the beach and then the afternoon waiting for our bus to Rio Gallegos. And waiting. And waiting. By the time it had arrived, two and a half hours late, we were a little concerned about making our connecting bus out of Rio Gallegos the next afternoon. "No worries", the gentleman from the bus company assured us. "The following bus will wait for your one, yes even if it is five hours late." That was quite a relief because after a further delay of an hour and a half due to the bus electrics going down (see note 3 below) we were running over four hours late. “Don’t worry”, the bus driver told us as he dropped us off in Rio Gallegos, “it will be here at 4pm”. Actually, what he said was “don’t worry, they will be here at 4pm.”
When they turned up and opened the Andesmar bus company office they had no idea what to do about our predicament. Four hours and many many words of uncomprehended Spanish later we left the bus station with assurances that a hotel and tickets for tomorrow would be sorted out for us. I don’t think we were all that confident. Thanks be to God, both these things did indeed materialise, and we are now bathed, refreshed and sitting in the final two seats on the El Pinguino bus to Punta Arenas. However, we’ve not really succeeded in giving any of the people we met in Rio Gallegos (4 bus officials from two different bus companies, three hotel employees and a very helpful Mexican lady called Lina who offered to call her friends and find us a place to stay when we were getting desperate at about 6pm) a credible explanation as to why we want to go to Punta Arenas. Suggestions on the back of a postcard please.
Our bus took us across the border to Southern Chile. I provided the entertainment with my best impression of that tourist regularly featured on Aussie reality TV show “Border Control” who ticked the “nothing to declare” box whilst carrying a bag of fresh vegetables in his backpack … and then looked shocked when the dog found my backpack, of all the bags in the bus. Paolo, a very nice Chilean chap gave us a caution and let us off without a fine, albeit feeling rather foolish. Incidentally, we have now met up with two American couples in Chile and both of them also had "border control" moments crossing into Chile. It makes me feel a little less foolish, and rather thankful that this didn't happen in Santiago airport where it seems they are pretty hardcore.
Maps of our travels are below. Not the most hi-tech I know. The first one marks the main stops on our journey south from Rio. Ans the second one shows the southernmost point that we got to - Fuerto Bulnes, about 50km north of Cabo Froward the southernmost tip of the mainland. To get there would have involved 4 days of hiking there and back and 3 river crossings in each direction, and with maximums of about 10 degrees that didn't sound so appealing!
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