Punta Arenas, Chile

Well, we have finally arrived at our last port of call in Chile - Punta Arenas. Way back when, in 1520, the explorer Magellan arrived in these waters and there is a statue in the town square erected to him.
This is the southernmost city in Chile and despite being so far away from everything, it is also one of the most modern. Back in the early 1900s, sheep ranching and the gold rush made millionaires out of some of the people here. Back then, there was no Panama canal, so travelers to California or the Yukon had to sail around South America to get to the gold fields. Punta Arenas was one of the places that they would stop at to load up on supplies and provisions.

Some of those people, notably the Braun and Menendez families, did very well for themselves. They owned practically everything in town including luxury homes like the one pictured above. Downtown Punta Arenas is a mix of modern architecture and these wonderful old buildings.

One of these mansions is now a museum, so I went inside to take a tour of the place. The ground floor has beautiful rooms that are kept just like they were back in 1906.

After exploring the city, I returned to the ship to watch a Chilean folk show. The singers and dancers put on a lively show, but there weren't too many people watching the performance. This is because the passengers with money were out getting up close and personal with penguins.

We are getting pretty close to Antarctica, so there are lots of penguins in the area. Since I had already seen them in Australia, I decided not to spend hundreds of dollars seeing them here. Some passengers paid thousands of dollars ($3300 USD to be exact) to take a plane out to Antarctica to see them. If I had won the lottery, I might have joined them, but unfortunately I didn't win a dime. Instead, I will have to be content to look at them from the bow of the ship when we sail into Antarctic waters in a couple of days.