Day 2: The Patagonia Adventure - This Isn’t a Cute Vacation

Day 2 - We made it to Punta Arenas - Friday, 2/24/23

“Sandy, this is not a cute vacation” was the text I received from Kristi a few days out from our trip to South America. We were comparing packing notes. Once we got through our hiking checklist, we were finding our suitcase space limited and were trying to whittle down to the necessities.

Our husbands, the master planners of this trip, added in a few days in Punta Arenas before our seven days of Patagonia hiking, and then a few days after in Santiago. We would be gone for a total of fourteen days with weather spanning from lows in the 30s to highs in the 80s.

The text chain continued…

“What are you packing for shoes? A sundress for the city?”

Following Kristi’s lead, I ultimately left my cute clothes at home. Instead, we erred in overpacking the hiking layers. With our husbands providing the recommended clothing and gear list, next was planning clothing for long hours in flight.

Merging in Santiago from our traveling duos to a singular crew of four, we were smelling ripe from our overnight flying with just enough time to brush our teeth in the airport bathrooms. Greeting each other with a hug and a need for fresh deodorant, I immediately brought up Kristi’s past comment about our non-cute vacation. Laughing, we both acknowledged that this would be a chapter name for our travel logs.

There would be no changing of clothes until we reached our final destination of the day, Punta Arenas. Clothing conservation and reuse ended up being a recurring theme in the twelve days ahead of us. Not a cute trip.

With time before our next flight, we used Tom’s airport lounge pass to catch a bite to eat and charge our devices. I had a double bathroom lesson as my initiation into South America. First, I learned that toilet paper is not flushed but put in a trash can instead. I next found myself locked in the bathroom. When I finally got out, I told Kristi “Be careful of the bathroom door.”

I soon found that although I couldn’t articulate in Spanish the door issue, there must be a universal code of a woman stuck in a bathroom. When I told Kristi about my bathroom dilemma, she shared that they had already called maintenance as the door was being fixed when she walked by.

Landing in Punta Arenas, I quickly surmised that English was definitely not the primary language with most people at the airport and transportation, not English-speaking. Although this should have been expected, it was a first for me as much of my international travel to date has been to countries that cater to Americans. It was rare that I would have to try to communicate with an accommodations employee who didn’t speak English. Now, this was flipped.

Garrett commented on feeling the same and that not knowing the native language made him feel small. This comment was true and certainly helped us walk in the shoes of people coming to the US who were not English-speaking. Internet translation tools are a dream when you actually have the Internet (foreshadowing tomorrow’s blog post).

Arriving at our hotel, we found it to be a quant hotel with all feels of local flavor. We were asked for our passports at check-in, which Garrett and I quickly produced. The next request was already nestled in our passports.

“Can I have your immigration papers please?”

This was a question that stumped Tom and Kristi. They only had their passports with no paperwork handed to them in Customs. They could only look at the hotel receptionist blankly.

“What immigration papers?”

After a lengthy discussion we learned that 1) everyone entering South America from a different country is given these papers during the passport check at Customs, 2) the hotel staff (by now another staff member was at the front desk surveying the situation) shared that they had never had an international guest who was accidentally not given these papers and 3) you can’t get out the country without them.

It was now too late to visit the local police to obtain these needed papers. Tomorrow would have to start with Tom and Kristi visiting the Punta Arenas police station. We had now sunk from a non-cute vacation to an illegal one.

Time for a drink and Chilean food. With a map in hand and instructions from the hotel staff, we headed out. The instructions seemed straightforward. Go a couple of blocks, turn right, and a couple more blocks, and there would be lots of restaurant options. After going in what seemed like circles and not seeing anything that looked like a sit-down restaurant, we thought a bar would be a better place to survey the map.

Kristi demonstrated her resourcefulness early by stopping a random man walking down the street, hoping he spoke English.

“Excuse me, sir, can you point us in the direction of a place where we can get a drink?”

We were thrilled when we saw he understood her English question.

“Yes, of course. Do you want cocoa or coffee drink?”

We knew then that we didn’t speak the exact same language, but close enough. With some clarifying comments, we found some bar options. We tried the historic Shackleton’s first. Tom had read the book Endurance on Sir Shackleton’s Antarctic Expedition and had this restaurant and bar on his list of travel stops.

We expected them to be busy but thought we would try for a table.

Tom to the hostess: “Do you have a table for four available?”

Answer: “I don’t know. You just need to look.”

We looked. The only five tables they had were full. On to Plan B.

We found a cute corner coffee shop that also had sandwiches and sold beer and wine. Perfect, we thought, as we were all hungry at this point. After getting seated and menus, we waited ten minutes with no service. Now hungrier, we decided to move on, not wanting to hedge our bets on faster service with the meal preparation.

Tom, now both very hungry and very thirsty, decided to ask the front desk attendant of the hotel adjoining the coffee shop for a recommendation. The attendant spoke English and gladly recommended his friend’s restaurant, Luna’s, which was several blocks away.

We found the restaurant easily with the attendant’s perfect directions and found the entire area surrounding Luna’s full of many great restaurant and bar options for later meals through our weekend there.

Luna’s was fabulous. The vibe, the drinks, the staff, the food…all superb. The boys started their week of drinking the local beer and the girls loved the fresh fish in their seafood chowder. With full bellies and a good feel of a new city in a country foreign to us, we walked back to our hotel looking forward to our weekend in Punta Arenas. Well, at least once Tom and Kristi visit the local police.