We were scheduled to dock at 11 am, but we were a bit late because the notorious winds of Punta Arenas were doing their best to prevent us. We ended up needing a couple of tugs to get us in.
Our tour was a bus trip to a couple of museums and a lookout stop. The first stop was the maritime museum with replicas of famous ships all built to scale and with the same materials and fittings as the originals.
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| The entrance to the museum |
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| This is the Victory, the only one of Magellan's ships that made it all the way around and back to England. There was a crew of 23, I believe. |
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| Hard to imagine this dark and small hold on the ship in rough seas. |
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| The Beagle which Darwin sailed on. |
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| The privy |
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| The story of Shakelton and his ship, The Endurance |
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| Shackelton and 5 others set off across the Antarctic Ocean in this 23-foot-long lifeboat 800 miles to try to get help to save the 23 men he had to leave behind on Elephant Island. They made it to South Georgia island in about a week and after 5 months and 3 attempts, they were able to get back and rescue the 23 men. |
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| I liked this scrap sculpture of a breaching whale |
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| And this statue of a loyal dog awaiting his master's return from the sea. |
Next stop was another museum. Along the way, I got a couple of photos that were interesting.
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| These trees weren't blowing today - they've grown in this shape due to the frequent winds. |
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| I've never seen police cars with flashing green lights before. |
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| This is representative of how the Beagle would have looked when she was all decked out. |
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| The Magellan penguin, which is what we saw yesterday. |
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| The other penguins that are in South America and the Antarctic |
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| At the monument to Magellan, it's good luck to touch the toe of the native man. They used to say you had to kiss it, but since Covid, they've decided that just touching it was enough. |
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The monument was the last stop of the tour and close to the ship, so we left the tour here to walk a very short distance to the famous Shackelton Bar.
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| Before going off on the Endurance, Shackleton had visited the wealthy Mrs. Braun in her mansion here, which is now a hotel. This section is now a bar named in his honor. Our friend, Marilyn from Oregon, told us we had to go there for a Pisco Sour. We tried when we were here 10 years ago, but it was closed! Success today. |
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| They have very interesting drinks and at pretty reasonable prices, considering where we were. The Pisco Sours were around $7. |
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| And they were delicious (and packed a punch!) We met Mary from Jacksonville on our tour and she came along with us - that's her drink at the top. Thanks for the suggestion, Marilyn! |
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| This room used to be the solarium or winter garden of the mansion. In 2023 they moved the bar to this room. It's isn't very large, but it is light and airy. |
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| This was the original bar and is now a restaurant for the hotel. |
We got back to the ship too late for Trivia and we definitely didn't need anything more to drink (!), so we just went to dinner at Compass Rose at 6:30 pm. The winds were still very strong and we watched as a Crystal ship at anchor sent its tenders back and forth. They were really bouncing around and we could empathize, but were grateful to be docked. We departed, with the help of 2 tugs again, just after 8 pm for the Chilean Fjords.
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