Natales to Punta Arenas
- kmanhartsberger
- Nov 9
- 2 min read
From Puerto Natales we had roads to take going south and deeper into Patagonia. The hotel had posters on the walls with the famous images of the Patagonian Cowboy, and once we started to move around we could see real landscapes with cattle and sheep. It is dry and barren, but not like a desert, and it is windy and even in high summer the temperature doesn't get above +15, but it feels quite gentle. Life is not straight forward, and it can be hard to get supplies, and in the shops it is visible for example in the range and quality of fresh fruit and vegetables. Even supply of petrol is a bit unpredictable.
Puerto Natales surprised us being a very well established town, equipped for the tourists that visit this part of the world. It had an ice cream place with many and strange flavours, and it took Harold a lot of time deciding what he wanted to eat. All of them perhaps?
We spent one day visiting Torres del Paine, a national park with a very special mountain range. The road from Natales goes in a circle, covering some beautiful landscape. Part of the trip also took us to a cave, Cueva del Milodón.
The next part of the trip was driving on the Ruta del Fin del Mundo, ending up in Punta Arenas. This city is right on the Magallanes Sound. It is well established, with nice houses and a huge number of dandelions. We visited in late Spring and the vegetation was just waking up for the summer season, very windy but with mild temperatures of about +15 during the day. We had a great lunch of local foods eating fish (meluza) and crab. The local beer is worthwhile trying too.
We were getting very close to the end of the world. We investigated the possibility of getting a flight to the Antarctic, but the season didn't start until December and we visited early November.
