DAY 300-WHERE HAS THE TIME GONE?

We got a flat
How about that
So we had to pull up in a hurry
Ordered a coffee, a burger and sat by the fire
An enjoyable stay without the worry
Mick Watson - as we waited for our tyre to be fixed - again


WEATHER: FREEZING-SUB ZERO CONDITIONS……. 4C in the truck

HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Warming up around 11.30am

BUMMER OF THE DAY: Rosita getting ANOTHER flat tyre

WORD OF THE DAY:  Holy cold Snap Batman

DISTANCE TRAVELLED: 

TURN THE FREEZER OFF.  OMG – how cold was it this morning?  Let me tell you it was BLOODY FREEZING.  I think it may have been the coldest night I have had on my entire journey in tents.  It wasn’t too bad last night when we went to bed, but maybe I knew it would be colder than the previous 2 nights as I kept my socks on when I went to bed, but boy did the temperature drop sometime in the wee hours and when that damn alarm went off at 6.15am, Kate and I didn’t want to move out of our nice warm sleeping bags and blankets.    It was that cold, besides being able to see out breath, the frost on the ground, the fog that had rolled in; when we were packing up the tents I got ICE on my hands.  ICE.  My thermometer on the truck said 4C and that was inside, so I am certain it dropped to zero at some stage during the night.  It was tough packing the tent and pulling out the metal pegs, as everything was just so cold and our hands were frozen, but we all managed to get it all done and in the truck departing the national park at 7.30am.  Needless to say we all skipped on the showers this morning, but there was no water I found out later anyway.

So today I have been away from home for 300 days!!!  It does seem like a life time ago I waved goodbye to Shelly and my god-daughters on the 27^th March 2011 at Brisbane Airport.  That was a very sad day for me and in a recent message from Shelly after I had emailed her about Zeme, she mentioned deep down that she knew that I wouldn’t be coming back and if I did it wouldn’t be for long.  Funny I wasn’t even thinking like that at that point, but that is why she is my best friend and she knew I was looking for a change, who would have thought it would have been so drastic.  Certainly not me.  So with 6 of my 7 continents visited so far, hundreds of thousands of kilometers travelled by air and also by road, 38 countries visited, 49 international flights and countless of new friends made I have come a long way in 300 days.  All going to plan I will be on the road for another 165 days till I get back to Australia for a glorious 5 weeks, 3 of them I will be busy getting my stuff ready for Ethiopia, obtaining visa’s, buying clothes and some core food products that I know you can’t get in Ethiopia and I will be sending an extra bag back with Zeme full of my stuff.  I better warn him to bring only one bag so he can take 2 home to Addis.  I like the sound of that.  The other 2 weeks I will be showing Zeme around town and introducing him to you all and this I am very excited about.  I am telling you, you are going to LOVE him.  300 days.  I have been thankful for each day, it is a gift to wake up and live my dream.  I have opened my mind, my arms, and my heart to new people and things and I haven’t looked back.  What stories I will have to tell my children and I can’t wait to get my blog printed when my journey ends in August and re-read the experiences I have had.  Thanks to you all for your support, whether by Facebook, blog entries, email and text messages.  I LOVE you all.  300 days already.

We stopped at a small hotel/café just after 10am for a toilet stop when we found out that we had another flat tyre!  What is happening with poor Rosita?  She really is having a bad trot.  The main problem this time was that the valve had been pushed into the tyre, making it impossible to get air into it.  Gray really had to put on his thinking cap to decide and work out what would get us back on the road again and safely.  Well after some bushman mechanics and 1.5 hours later he had us back on the road again.  I’m not entirely sure what he did but I know it involved fuel, lighting it amongst other things and probably better not off asking.  Whatever he did it worked and got us back on the road.

We are heading to Punta Arenas, and yes say Arenas and we have joked the hell out of the name using your anus for the last week.  We need to liven our truck days somehow!!  Punta Arenas  meaning Sandy Point is a commune and the capital city of Chile's southernmost region, Magallanes and Antartica Chilena. The city was officially renamed Magallanes in 1927, but in 1938 it was changed back to Punta Arenas. It is the largest city south of the 46th parallel south.  Sitting by the Strait of Magellan Punta Arenas was established originally as a tiny penal colony in 1848. During the rest of the 1800s, it became increasingly large and important as international trade across the straits grew and the countryside around experienced a gold rush and a sheep farming boom around 1900. Chile effectively used Punta Arenas to exert sovereignty in southernmost South America leading to the Strait of Magellan being recognized as Chilean in the Boundary treaty of 1881 between Chile and Argentina. The geopolitical importance of Punta Arenas has remained high in the 20 and 21th century as the city is important for logistics in the Antarctic Peninsula.

Located on the Brunswick Peninsula. Punta Arenas is among the largest cities in the entire Patagonian Region. In 2002, it had a population of 120,000. It is roughly 1418.4 km from the coast of Antarctica.  The Magallanes region is considered part of Chilean Patagonia. Magallanes is Spanish for Magellan, the Portuguese explorer who, while circumnavigating the earth for Spain, passed close to the present site of Punta Arenas in 1520. Early English navigational documents referred to its location as "Sandy Point".  The city proper is located on the northeastern shore of Brunswick Peninsula. Besides the eastern shore, with the settlements of Guairabo, Rio Amarillo and Punta San Juan, the peninsula is largely uninhabited.

Between about 1890 and 1940, the Magallanes region became one of the world's most important sheep-raising regions, with one company (Sociedad Explotadora de Tierra del Fuego) controlling over 10,000 square kilometers in southern Chile and Argentina. The headquarters of this company and the residences of the owners were in Punta Arenas.  The Punta Arenas Harbour, although exposed to storms, was considered one of the most important in Chile before the construction of the Panama Canal, because it was used as a coaling station by the steamships transiting between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Today it is mostly used by tourism cruises and scientific expeditions. The city is often a jumping-off point for Antarctic expeditions, although Ushuaia (Argentina) and Christchurch (New Zealand) are also common starting points.

 Among Chileans the city is also known for its strong winds (up to 130 km/hour). Winds tend to be strongest during the summer when city officials put up ropes in the downtown area to assist with unique wind currents created by the buildings.  Since 1986, Punta Arenas has been the first significantly populated city in the world to be directly affected by the hole in the ozone layer, exposing its residents to potentially damaging levels of ultraviolet radiation. 

Our final destination today was a seaside town of Punta Arenas and after a lunch stop just on the city limits the guys had to go and order 4 new tyres for Rosita.  Good idea fellas.  So the Firestone place was located in a duty free zone of the city, so we were given an hour to roam around the duty free shops.  Based on this I decided to buy a new camera.  My poor Pentax is starting to get some wear and tear, the first showing a few weeks ago with a mark on the inside of my lens, possibly on the mirror, because when I zoom on something I could zoom out the mark on the photos, but I had to zoom along way for this to happen, so my non zoomed photos have a black dot on them all and it is quite distinctive.  Then yesterday when I turn on the camera, it is making a noise, like the lens motor is getting stuck and the lens shakes for a few seconds.  For all the trouble of trying to get my 300AUD camera fixed in Buenos Aires, and either costing me more than a new one, I decided to retire my Pentax after 10 months of some heavy duty use-age and over 55,000 pictures taken I think I can safely say that I have got my money’s worth out of it.  So with Helen in tow, we hit all the electrical shops looking for what H calls ‘bridging camera’s’.  They aren’t a full SLR camera but they are a notch better than the point and shoots.  The main functions I use on the camera is the cropping, black and white and I wanted one with similar zoom or better than 26 optical zoom.  The only shop we found that had even a bridging camera was closed when we first got there, but as we were heading out the doors, it had opened after the siesta period had finished and the camera happened to be a Panasonic Lumix FZ47.  H went through the lenses, the zoom the functions and it actually looks just like an updated version of my Pentax but better.  The price was also great at 189,990 pesos which equates to around 360AUD, which is apparently a good price.  You know me, buying gadgets spontaneously, so it was sale for the guy, cash only, luckily there was an ATM just outside the shop, I got the cash and 5 minutes later I walked out with a new camera under my wing.  I am really happy with my power shop and when I got back to the truck Julia had been looking at that particular camera before coming away and decided on the smaller model but she said I won’t be disappointed and the camera was retailing for 280GBP so I think I also got a great price which at the end of the day I was happy what I paid for it no matter how much cheaper I could of found it.  So of course it has a Chile plug for the recharger, but I have a universal adapter I bought last time I was in London, so besides Africa I have all the continents covered for the plug.  It is a shame I didn’t get it in Argentina as they have Australian plugs for some weird reason, but at the end of the day, Ethiopia will be my final destination and as long as I have adapters, it doesn’t really matter.

4.30pm had us arriving at the Hotel Savoy.  A lot of us were tired as no-one got a good night’s sleep with the near Arctic conditions of last night.  Kate and I decided to have dinner in the hotel and just stay in for the remainder of the afternoon.  Punta Arenas didn’t have much to offer in sightseeing options that late in the afternoon and was pretty much like any other town and a stopover point for us to break our journey.   

After 23 days of in a tent, with a hostel thrown in here and there over the 4 weeks, we take the hotel stays very seriously.  From free Wi-Fi, to sleeping in a bed, with a pillow and a night light.  Being able to hang your arm over the edge of a bed, to having a hot shower, and a bathmat to stand on when you get out, to a nice fluffy towel, rather than my travel towel and to have a shower without having to wear your thongs on your feet is just heaven.  Top all that off with a TV and a remote, yes people a remote control we are just about as close to heaven you are going to get, especially with the cold snap we had last night, makes you appreciate it all that more.  We are camping in Ushuaia tomorrow night, which is the most southern city in the world, so one would expect the launching point for the Antarctic cruises  will be cold and looking at the weather forecast I am not sure if the city will be hospitable on that front, but the gang have 3 nights here, Kate and I only 2 as we fly out on Tuesday for 10 nights in a hotel in BA and Kate is now thanking her own travel gods that she changed her mind and decided to come to BA, and so am I.  I will be busy, but to have a friend there for that long will be cool.

So this is goodnight from Chile for the last time. xx