It is a full day’s drive to our destination, Punta Arenas, at the southern end of Chile on the Straights of Magellan. We will fly out tomorrow afternoon. We stop at Puerto Natales
for a very nice seafood lunch. Howard and I have bay scallops and they are quite good. We do a little shopping and while I have Jonathan alone I ask him about a gratuity for Rex, the tour owner/operator. The 3 couples have had discussions about tips. It was suggested that we tip our drivers, Norberto and Jonathan, but the 6 of us thought that since Rex was the owner of the tour company we should not tip him. Boy, am I glad I asked Jonathan! We suggested that we tip Rex $200 to $400 per couple. Yikes! Everyone now needs to check their resources and we discover that we need to find an operable ATM (which can be difficult). As usual, Scott disappears and cannot be found when everyone else is ready to leave Puerto Natales. My name may end up in the headlines before this trip is over! As we head out of town Jonathan informs everyone that we will be driving through a top-secret military area and anyone caught taking pictures will be imprisoned and fined. Of course that’s a lie for the benefit of Scott–no one wants to stop until we reach our destination. Before Jonathan’s announcement we stop at a religious shrine called “Defunta Correa.”
Roadside memorials (sometimes incredibly elaborate ones) are frequently seen in both Chile and Argentina. A couple of times we’ve seen plastic soft drink bottles surrounding the shrine but until now we had no idea why the bottles were there. Apparently there was a woman with a baby that was lost in the desert without water. She died but her baby was able to nurse from the dead woman until they were found. It was considered a miracle that the baby lived so now there are shrines with the drink containers as a remembrance. Compared to the other shrines we’ve seen, this shrine is over the top! There are hundreds of soft drink bottles around several statues of a dead woman with a nursing baby along with other religious statues, flowers and candles. These people are serious about their memorials and religion! We arrive at our destination and the Hotel Los Navegantes. Make note of that hotel so that you never stay there! Our room smelled like someone had been smoking nonstop for 100 years. The bedding was as thin as netting. But we all did have a nice happy hour in Karen and Bill’s room–and finished all the wine. We go to a beautiful old hotel for drinks in the Shackleton Bar, named after a famous explorer whose ship was lost in the Antarctic ice but was able, after a harrowing journey, to save his crew. Unfortunately the beloved dogs were not saved–they were dinner. All 10 of us toasted our wonderful journey and expressed our gratefulness for new-found friends. We had dinner at our hotel and it was not bad. I had a steak with mushroom sauce and Howard had conger eel. For dessert we had mousse made from the berries of the Calafate bush, a local plant. It was delicious. Off to bed to dream our last dreams in Patagonia…for this trip anyway.