Punta Arenas, Chile, 29th January 2010

We docked in Punta Arena, the southernmost port in Chile today at about 7 a.m. After breakfast we walked ashore, having no fixed excursions. The town is quite a thriving place with smart houses for the most part and a mixture of old and new buildings. The most striking feature of the town is the large number of banks, local and international. One or more on every block, so it seemed. Quite why there should be so many is not clear. There are a few old and interesting buildings including:

• The Braun House – built in 1895 – it a very beautiful example of the French beaux artes style. The draperies and woodwork were very impressive.
  
• The Magellenes Museum which is housed in another of the grand houses of the city owned by a family of Braun-Menendez. This house is largely preserved the way it was as a dwelling but also has a number of exhibits from the surrounding area such as bones of prehistoric animals and relics from the indigenous Indians, now all disappeared, who lived here when the European arrived.
  
• The maritime museum which contains many nice exhibits of the maritime past. One of the most impressive events in this museum is an old film, taken in 1929 by a Captain Johnson of a voyage he took on the sailing vessel Peking (yes the one which is in the South Street Seaport in NYC). The film is remarkable when considering the time in which it was taken and the conditions of the voyage which were simply awful, even though the storms which they endured where winds reached 100 mph were described as the 'best storms they had ever been in'!! The shots from the top of the masts in the heaving seas and of the Captain's dog which was trained to bite slow-movers around the ship were incredible. The camera seemed to get submerged many times but still kept on working and the intrepid Captain Johnson took film from all angles in all conditions. I cannot think of any better representation of what it was like to round the Horn than this. The voyage started in Hamburg and due to a huge storm in the North Sea took 14 days to get into the English Channel. Thereafter it was plain sailing until Cape Horn when things really got exciting. I believe that the film is in the Mystic Seaport Museum and if so and anyone is visiting there, it is well worth seeing. The other exhibits in this museum were also good and well laid out.
  

  
   

The Indians were decimated either by the greater fire-power of the Europeans or the disease which they brought with them and to which the Indians had no defense. This whole area has a most rich past with visits by as diverse a bunch of people as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid who escaped here from North America when things got hot up there, a bandit named Red Pig, Darwin and Fitzroy, (who kidnapped some natives and took them back to UK), all sorts of eccentric Scots and British farmers and sheep farmers as well as the sundry seafarers who were wrecked in the area and stayed. The book 'In Patagonia" by Bruce Chatwin which I was advised to bring with me is a fascinating account of the author's wanderings in the region and of the people he met and the tales of their forebears.

We sailed for Ushuaia at 2 pm today and we will be there tomorrow. We have an excursion which takes us on the 'train to the end of the world' which should be interesting. I did try to see if I could arrange a helicopter or plane trip out over Cape Horn but it was not possible as the area is a military zone and permission needs to be obtained in advance. Pity, I wish now that I had investigated further earlier.