We were anchored off Punta Arenas quite early this morning and this was a tender port and we had almost 12 hours in port so had no need to rush.  We’d opted for room service breakfast so we had breakfast and took our time getting showered and dressed.  By the time we were ready to go they’d announced that there was no waiting for a tender and we were able to go straight on. 

It was only a short distance into the terminal.  We’d no excursions or tours booked for here and planned to just have a bit of a wander through the town.  This was our first time in Chile and so we found a bank first of all as I had no Chilean pesos.  With that sorted we just wandered and found the main square with the most beautiful music resounding all around the area.  It was two Chilean guys playing pan flutes and the sound was exquisite and haunting.  There was quite a crowd gathered listening and enjoying.  I took a short video on my phone and will attach it here.  Though it won’t be the same as hearing it in this beautiful park which had the most magnificent tall trees – some of which were Macracarpa, Craig tells me.   We continued our wandering and eventually found a nice coffee shop which had wifi and had a wicked cappuccino laced with cream – see the picture and was able to get another blog post published and general check out how the rest of the world was faring.  While in there it rained quite heavily but luckily for us there was blue skies peeping through again by the time we left.  But it was bitterly cold – about 6 degrees and that’s damn cold for us Queenslanders!  We checked out a couple of shops and then made our way back to the ship.  We opted to sit up top on the tender.  Talk about bracing – our selfie says it all!

Once on board we went up to Horizon Court and had some delicious hot vegetable broth for lunch.  We had a lazy afternoon in our cabin – I’d been able to download a couple more library books onto my Ipad so I immersed myself in one of them.  Around 4.30 we headed down to Crooners and had a couple of drinks and chatted to a few people round the bar including one guy who’d made a trip 4 years ago to the Everest Base station.  It’s always so interesting hearing about other people’s travels. 

We came back up to the room and changed for dinner and tonight shared with two American ladies from North Carolina, a couple from Maine  - he was a retired submarine commander who had retrained as a teacher after leaving the Navy.  Our remaining diner was a Canadian who now lives in Wales and I’m not sure what he did.  We did discover that his daughter in law  Sarah was previously a Cruise Director with Holland America  - his son was a Second Officer with them and they now have a baby boy.  Irene and Dave – we’re pretty sure she was the cruise director on the Maasdam?

We went back to Crooners for a nightcap and got chatting to an English couple we’d met previously.  And then it was time to head up to bed – decided to give the casino a miss tonight.