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4/1/2018 Punta Arenas and Isla Magdalena penguins

By Unknown
Breakfast in the Hostel Keoken is really nice and around 10am we walked short distance to the centre.  I forgot to mention, we had a private room and a private bathroom and all was very clean and comfortable in the  hostel. 

The town is clean and nice and feels so much better than Ushuaia. We can also see a Bata shoe shop (Czech brand) on the street. Firstly we are going to get tickets for the Isla Magdalena to see penguins. We found Comapa travel agency which sells one ticket for 50000 pesos. And we are lucky, there are only 3 spaces left for today. We paid by Revolut payment card and very shortly after us, another couple asked about the tickets too, so we were very lucky. We could speak English here without any problem. 

Then we wanted to withdraw some Chilean pesos from a cash machine and tried our Visa debit card in Banko Credit de Chile and for 150000 pesos, the cash machine asked fee 6500 pesos. So we tried Santander and for 150000 pesos the fee was 5000. So we used this cash machine. After this, we checked a statue on a little square and then very nice old house (museum) nearby. 

We had to rush back to the hostel, to prepare some food for the penguins trip and we met Florian and Natalie in the lobby and agreed to take a taxi together to the penguins trip (they were going on the same one). We asked the hostel reception to call a taxi for us and the taxi driver was here on time at 13:00. The taxi ride was around 10 minutes and costed 2500 pesos. The place from where you get the ferry to the Isla Magdalena is called Terminal Tres Puntas and it is on the northeast edge of Punta Arenas Town. 

The ferry ride took 2 hours, so we reached the island around 4pm. There is a circuit path and the guides from Comapa travel company make sure all 160 people from the ferry walk on the path and don’t stay too long, so the ferry can leave at 5pm back to Punta Arenas. 

Then all four of us took a taxi together to uninark supermarket. The taxi costed around 3500 pesos. We needed to do shopping for dinner together as we decided to we can cook curry for all four of us in the hostel. We couldn’t find coconut milk, neither cream. The only thing we found just before we left the supermarket, was a tin with coconut substance mixed with sugar syrup (which we found when we opened it during cooking). 


Anyway, the dinner was excellent, we shared two and half bottles of wine together and had really nice chat. 
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