least this would pass the time.

We climbed into the minivan and headed out to the Seno Otway Pinguinera, where we would see the Magellan Penguins, our 8th species of penguin! Once we arrived we found out that we only had an hour at the Pinguinera which we weren’t too happy about! Having said that the penguins were again fascinating and these little fellows lived in burrows under the ground. It was strange to see them living on and under grass. Our time felt fairly rushed but it had been a good way to spend a couple of hours and at least it meant that we had got out of Punta Arenas for a few hours. On arriving back in Punta Arenas we found a nice café/restaurant and had a fairly decent meal before we headed back to our grotty hostel for our final night. We certainly wouldn’t miss Punta Arenas and we hoped that we would never return.

We had an ok bus journey to Puerto Natales although it was very cold and wet. We didn’t have anywhere booked and it was pouring with rain when we got off the bus, so we headed to the nearest place out of Lonely Planet and it was full! I saw a sign for a hostel above a café so we thought we’d go and check it out - result! The room was lovely and even thought there was no sign of a heater it was a world away from the grotty place in the dreaded Punta Arenas.

After chilling and taking a shower in the vain hope that it would warm us up we headed into town to check out what was on offer and what the score was with Torres del Paine - the main reason we had come to this part of the world. All of the tours seemed expensive and we weren’t really sure what to do. We had a chilled day, mainly checking out tours and internet stuff.