......but it took nearly a full 24 hours to get here. After traveling all night, I arrived at the hotel in Punta Arenas at 9:30 am local time. After cleaning up and changing clothes I spent some time just walking around the town and getting my bearings for the coming week. Our group has distinctive jackets and I seemed to see them everywhere and by noon had met a bunch of new people.
To give you an idea exactly where I am right now in this world, this is a view of the Strait of Magellan taken from almost at the entrance of our hotel.
Only the construction of the Panama Canal in the early 1900s diminished the economic and historical importance of this area where I am now.
The city of Punta Arenas is not the southernmost community in the world--a town in Argentina is slightly lower in Tierra del Fuego (which means "land of fire.") Today, Punta Arenas is experiencing an economic resurgence as an oil exploration town (kind of a smaller version of Houston) and as a growing center for Antarctica tourism.
The streets are laid out in traditional Spanish style with plazas but many of the older buildings show a very strong British influence.
As with all South American towns, there are monuments and statues in every plaza. Here, it is (of course) a monument to Magellan himself.
I will have free time later this week to come back and really explore the city and check out the several museums.
I bought some groceries and headed back to the hotel where I met up with a group and we went out to eat. I obviously haven't met everybody, but there are some pretty serious runners in this group. There is a man who claims the Guinness World Record for running the world's most extreme ultra running events in the shortest time, while another runner has run a marathon in each of the fifty states--but has done it seven times. The medical doctor in our group runs a 2:28 marathon which almost makes him in the elite, professional class and we have a nine-year-old boy running the full 26.2 mile marathon in Antarctica tomorrow. One of the group I had lunch with is a veterinarian from Cypress, Texas who swam the English Channel last year--she's second from the right in the photo below. The fact that I'm a slow, half-marathoner doesn't seem to make any difference--everybody here seems to be in it for the adventure (as am I).
I really look forward to spending the next six days with this group--I'm sure there are going to be some amazing stories.
We had a really nice pre-race dinner tonight but the bad news appears to be that heavy fog will prevent us from flying to Antarctica tomorrow. As of now, we will be doing the penguin colony tomorrow, Antarctica Tuesday (weather permitting), Patagonia Wednesday and the Punta Arenas race Thursday.
The penguin colony boat doesn't go out until 4:00 pm tomorrow (it doesn't get dark until after 10:00) so I will probably have most of the day free to explore. We still could fly out tomorrow, but it doesn't look likely right now.
Still, off to a really good start and I don't mind having a little longer to sleep in tomorrow morning......
To give you an idea exactly where I am right now in this world, this is a view of the Strait of Magellan taken from almost at the entrance of our hotel.
To give you an idea how far south I am right now, if I drug a canoe into the water and paddled to the right, I'd end up in Vancouver, Canada. But, if I paddled to the left, I'd end up eventually at Houston. This is literally at the end of the world.
As you can see in the picture, the weather is beautiful today.....cool with light winds and a beautiful clear sky. Things also look good for Antarctica tomorrow.
In 1520 Ferdinand Magellan, looking for a way to pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans, sailed and charted this channel and for nearly four centuries it became one of the most important waterways in the world with regards to world trade and military power.
The city of Punta Arenas is not the southernmost community in the world--a town in Argentina is slightly lower in Tierra del Fuego (which means "land of fire.") Today, Punta Arenas is experiencing an economic resurgence as an oil exploration town (kind of a smaller version of Houston) and as a growing center for Antarctica tourism.
The streets are laid out in traditional Spanish style with plazas but many of the older buildings show a very strong British influence.
As with all South American towns, there are monuments and statues in every plaza. Here, it is (of course) a monument to Magellan himself.
I will have free time later this week to come back and really explore the city and check out the several museums.
I bought some groceries and headed back to the hotel where I met up with a group and we went out to eat. I obviously haven't met everybody, but there are some pretty serious runners in this group. There is a man who claims the Guinness World Record for running the world's most extreme ultra running events in the shortest time, while another runner has run a marathon in each of the fifty states--but has done it seven times. The medical doctor in our group runs a 2:28 marathon which almost makes him in the elite, professional class and we have a nine-year-old boy running the full 26.2 mile marathon in Antarctica tomorrow. One of the group I had lunch with is a veterinarian from Cypress, Texas who swam the English Channel last year--she's second from the right in the photo below. The fact that I'm a slow, half-marathoner doesn't seem to make any difference--everybody here seems to be in it for the adventure (as am I).
I really look forward to spending the next six days with this group--I'm sure there are going to be some amazing stories.
We had a really nice pre-race dinner tonight but the bad news appears to be that heavy fog will prevent us from flying to Antarctica tomorrow. As of now, we will be doing the penguin colony tomorrow, Antarctica Tuesday (weather permitting), Patagonia Wednesday and the Punta Arenas race Thursday.
The penguin colony boat doesn't go out until 4:00 pm tomorrow (it doesn't get dark until after 10:00) so I will probably have most of the day free to explore. We still could fly out tomorrow, but it doesn't look likely right now.
Still, off to a really good start and I don't mind having a little longer to sleep in tomorrow morning......
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