So my trip’s over; what did I learn? Well before I get to that, a little about my trip home: Coming home The journey back from Santiago was tiring, of course, but quite pleasant. We flew in EC-LEU, a much more modern A346 than the one we went out on. It had in-seat touchscreen entertainment,…

Getting here I flew from Punta Arenas to Santiago in CC-BEH, another of LAN’s Airbus A321s, but this one fitted with rather more seats than the flights to/from Iquique and Temuco, leading to much reduced leg room for the 3 hour flight. It looked quite a new aircraft, and checking since the flight, I discovered…

I think I first heard of Valparaiso, bizarrely, in a CD of French sea-shanties I was once given. I never thought I’d get to go there: Puis nous irons à Valparaiso, «Haul away», hé houlà-t’chalez Où d’autres laisseront leurs os, «Haul» matelot, hé ho hisse et ho !  Getting there Valparaíso is easy to reach…

I had been planning to just pay a simple visit to Tierra del Fuego to play radio from there. However, the ferry schedules (which were only published while I was in Chile) turned out to be such that I’d only have had a couple of hours on the island. Given how far from anywhere it…

Before I start this post, a bit of counter-intuitive trivia: Today, the 10th December, sunrise in Punta Arenas (where we have long summer days) was at 08:12 UTC. In Plymouth, UK (where the days are shorter), it was at 08:05 UTC. That is, on the Pacific coast of southern Chile, sunrise today was at almost…

I’d been expecting to start this blog post with something like ‘Torres del Paine is justifiably known as the jewel in the crown of Chilean National Parks, and I’d have liked to have spent more time here’. Not so. Whilst it is truly spectacular and I’m definitely glad I made the excursion to see it,…

I’m quite impressed by Puerto Natales. I only had half a day to look around, between getting off the boat and going to Torres del Paine National Park tomorrow, but it’s not a bad place for somewhere so far from anywhere else (Punta Arenas, where I’ll be heading on Wednesday, is about the nearest town,…

By the nature of this update, this blog post was written as a log while we were underway. As a result, it’s a bit long… Friday, 7pm: In port near Puerto Montt, 41.5°S, 73.0°W We’re on board the Edén, after a lot of waiting around. It turns out the boat was actually moored just down…

Puerto Montt is a large city at the northern fringe of Patagonia and at the start of the Carretera Austral. I’d come here primarily not for tourism but to do the mundane parts of long-duration travel (going to the bank, finding a laundrette and giving back my hire car), as well as it being the…

The island of Chiloé is a large island, just off the coast at Puerto Montt. Currently, it is accessible only by car ferry (a one-way crossing with car was about £11) but a bridge is under construction and due to be completed in 2020. Judging by the graffiti and posters I saw, it appears that…