Day 73 Thursday 6th December:Back on the Straits and Narrow

Frankie writes:

In the end we had an eventful evening in Puerto Natales. The town itself is windswept and exposed so you would expect robust structures to combat the elements. Alarmingly, the vast majority of structures are of corroding corrugated iron with the flimsiest of windows. Not an ideal format to combat the arctic winds. Nonetheless the town seems to try hard and the locals (and I do stress locals, more of that later) were friendly and helpful. But they do seem to have an unusual sense of taste in street art. At least it caught our attention.

 

We had an excellent dinner in the Santolla Restaurant, which specialises in seafood and in particular King Crab; a very welcome relief from beef! The architecture is interesting as the building is made from a series of 40ft shipping containers. The overall effect is minimalist but cool style. The food was also good, aided by the Calafate Pisco Sour(s).

It was then a fairly long walk led by Lois to our nightcap destination, The Last Hope, a pub and boutique gin distillery run by an Australian couple. After knocking to enter, we were frigidly received by what appeared to be a retired female basketball player (certainly not a looker & she towered over all of us) who then demanded that we listen to her presentation (she was one of the owners) on the history and beauty of Last Hope gin. Not exactly your dream scene at 11pm. Unfortunately, I can’t provide more detail because I was sat on the margin paying scant attention (because I wasn’t very interested) and was easily sidetracked into a conversation with an English couple sitting next to us. This was to prove a fatal error. Soon after Mrs Basketball had finished her promotional narrative, her equally tall (and unattractive) partner Mr Basketball came over to inform Frankie that he was being evicted from the bar! Now, you may rightly think that perhaps he has previous experience of such circumstances but without question this is the first time when he has been totally innocent. Various accusations were thrown about but our collective analysis was that Mrs Basketball had thrown a strop at his indifference to her gin presentation. Thankfully age got the better of violence, despite his Glasgow upbringing, and we retreated to the  more amiable environment of Baguales Brewery near the hotel to share stories of “You can take the man outay Glasgay but ye cannae take Glasgay out of the man!” etc etc

Today was our last long drive (570 kms) as we moved from Puerto Natales on the Pacific to Rio Grande on The Atlantic coast of Tierra del Fuego, including a ferry to cross the Straits of Magellan.

Even after the Straits we were still in Chile, which interestingly becomes much wider the further south you go. It is in fact impossible to travel to Ushuaia by land without passing through Chile. Our final border crossing was at the border outpost of San Sebastian (definitely no connection with the one in Spain!), where again everything went very smoothly.

Thereafter the drive was uneventful and the vistas somewhat flat and boring, certainly in comparison to what we have become accustomed to, with the highlight being a view of a Patagonia oil & gas field. Our arrival at our destination was met with shock by the group as the Grande Hotel proudly announced it had 5 stars. We soon discovered that this is more than slightly optimistic, but it is pleasant enough and certainly better than average for the Tour!

Tonight the objective is to find a budget priced restaurant to compensate for last night’s over expenditure and to prepare us for the final leg to The End of The World tomorrow.