Chilly in Chile – Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales

From Ushuaia we flew 35 minutes (in the air) to Punta Arenas paying U$20 departure tax, after checking in, to a cashier in the main area. It was freezing in the airport and we said “Ooh it’s chilly!” in unison on being hit by the air con waves, then laughed at the irony. Here we picked up our 4x4 pickup monster truck and soon realised we had no idea how to drive it to Puerto Natales – getting off the airport was bad enough. Hence I spent the first 40km trying to translate the manual about 4WD usage to find out why the RFW lock light was flashing. My Spanish has come in ever so handy – that’s just one example. Alas we never got to the bottom of the strange noise of springs / object rolling around going on all the time in the car but hoped for the best. The first half of the journey the flat landscape stretched for miles and was disturbingly dull. Finally we got some lumpy hills, forests of dead trees and then the sun broke through on the scene of a gaucho herding cattle with his dogs which was incredible. We did not see signs for the Seno Otway penguin colony en route so good job we did the trip in Ushuaia to Penguin Island.