RatSoap

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Windy Chile

From Ushuaia we went to Punta Arenas, our first port in Chile. On the way, we passed through very narrow rivers with hills on both sides. A few times we saw glaciers in between the hills on the right side. Glaciers are like rivers of ice. Most of them are frozen, but under the ice, water was flowing out like a waterfall.

Each glacier is named after a country (Italy, France, Germany, etc.), and the ice looks a really pretty shade of blue. Here is one of those glaciers:

In Punta Arenas, we went to an Internet cafe to check email and have a cup of coffee. A man there came to our table and kicked us OUT! He said he was sorry, but there is a law in Chile that says that kids are NOT allowed in places where adults can smoke. So we went to another (non-smoking) Internet cafe and, after checking email, the man there even gave us candy!

Punta Arenas was the last chance for us to see penguins, but it was too far to go, expensive, and all the vans were taken anyway. So instead we bought some postcards with photos of penguins.

Punta Arenas is cold and very windy---blowing sand and dirt in our eyes. We walked around and listened to a band play at the main square, and visited a museum that was a house once owned by a very rich family (name: Braun-Menendez) that earned money by shipping goods and raising sheep. We saw their dining room. It was so huge it could fit many families.

My Mom likes to go to supermarkets in different places to see what they sell. So we went to one nearby (our first in Chile) and bought a carton of wine, a bottle of water, and three empanadas (a kind of turnover with meat and onions in it). I helped figure out how much the prices were in American money. Five hundred Chilean pesos is almost one U.S. dollar, and everything we bought that day in that supermarket was not even three dollars.

We sat on a bench at the town square to eat the empanadas. Two dogs came along and sat next to the bench, licking their lips. RJE said this was because the meat inside the empanadas tasted and smelled like dog food (and it did!)

next>

Write back to the rats at