Three days in Punta Arenas: a fortune made from sheep, spent on marble

Two nights on the Strait of Magellan, with the wool barons' mansions and their cemetery, a boat out to a penguin colony, and the ship replicas on the shore.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Punta Arenas
Places
7 across 3 days
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For about forty years, before the Panama Canal opened, every ship going between the Atlantic and the Pacific came through the Strait of Magellan, and Punta Arenas was the only place to refuel. Add a sheep boom on the surrounding grassland and a handful of families who ended up owning most of Patagonia, and you get a town at the bottom of the world with neoclassical mansions on its main square and a cemetery that would not look out of place in Milan.

It is still the biggest place for a very long way and it has no road connection to the rest of Chile at all, because the icefields to the north make one impossible. Everybody arrives by air, or by driving across Argentina.

Two nights is right for the city. Most people are here on the way to Torres del Paine and give it an afternoon, which is a shame, because the mansions, the cemetery and the boat to the penguins are worth more than that and cost very little.

Highlights

  • The municipal cemetery, where the wool families built mausoleums and the cypresses are clipped into walls
  • Palacio Sara Braun on the main square, built by the richest woman in Patagonia
  • Isla Magdalena, a low island in the strait covered in nesting Magellanic penguins
  • Full-size replicas of Magellan's Victoria and the lifeboat Shackleton sailed to South Georgia
  • A pisco sour in a former shipping club, with the wind rattling the windows

Where to stay

Punta Arenas

Founded in 1848 as a penal settlement and coaling station, the city grew rich on shipping and then on sheep, and about a hundred and twenty five thousand people live in it now. It is the largest settlement on the Strait of Magellan and the administrative capital of Chilean Patagonia, and it is closer to Antarctica than it is to Santiago.

The layout is a grid around one square with the port on one side and the pampa behind. Two nights covers the centre, the cemetery and the museums, with a full day for the boat out into the strait.

Day by day

Day 1 in Punta Arenas

The square, the mansion and the hill above it

Plaza Munoz Gamero is where the money went. Magellan stands in the middle on a plinth, with a bronze indigenous Fuegian at his feet whose toe has been rubbed smooth by everybody who wants to come back, and the square is ringed by the houses the wool and shipping families built for themselves between 1890 and 1910.

The grandest is Sara Braun's. She arrived from Latvia as a child, married the largest sheep operator in Patagonia, inherited the lot and built a French-style palace on the corner of the square with materials shipped from Europe. Part of it is now a hotel and part is open to look round, and the interiors are absurd in the best way.

Cerro de la Cruz is ten minutes uphill and gives you the whole city in one look: coloured roofs, the port, the strait, and Tierra del Fuego across the water on a clear day. Go up in the late afternoon.

Nothing today is more than a five block walk. Given the wind, that is a feature.

  1. 14:30

    Plaza Muñoz Gamero

    Architecture

    The city's main square, planted with dark conifers that survive the wind, with Magellan on a column in the middle. Rub the Fuegian's toe if you want the legend, and look at the buildings on all four sides, which are the point.

  2. 15:30

    Palacio Sara Braun

    Culture

    Built between 1895 and 1905 for the family that ran the Tierra del Fuego sheep company, with a French architect and imported everything. The public rooms are open in the afternoon and there is a bar under the glass dome that is the best drink in the city.

  3. 17:30

    Cerro de la Cruz

    Visit

    A viewpoint ten minutes uphill from the square, with the roofs, the port and the strait below and Tierra del Fuego on the horizon when the cloud lifts. Free, exposed and worth timing for the last light.

With more time: The Museo Naval y Maritimo near the waterfront covers the strait, the wrecks and the men who surveyed it, and takes an hour. Museo Maggiorino Borgatello, run by the Salesian order that ran the missions here, has the region's natural history and a difficult, important collection relating to the Selknam and Yamana peoples, most of whom did not survive the settlement of this coast.

Day 2 in Punta Arenas

Out to the penguins, and the ships they came in

Isla Magdalena is a bare, low island in the middle of the strait, about two hours out by boat, and in the southern summer it is covered with nesting Magellanic penguins in burrows, in numbers running to tens of thousands of pairs. There is a roped path from the jetty to the lighthouse and the birds ignore it entirely, walking across in front of you.

The sailings run from roughly November to March and only in the morning, and they are cancelled for wind more often than the operators admit, so book for your first possible day rather than your last. Some trips add Isla Marta and its sea lions on the way back.

In the afternoon, the Nao Victoria museum on the shore north of town is much better than it sounds. It holds full-size replicas you can climb around: Magellan's Victoria, the only ship of his five to finish the voyage; the James Caird, the twenty-three-foot lifeboat Shackleton sailed eight hundred nautical miles to fetch help; the schooner Ancud that claimed this coast for Chile.

Standing inside the Caird is the moment that stays with you. It is very small.

  1. 07:00

    Isla Magdalena Pinguinera (penguin rookery)

    Visit

    A morning sailing into the strait to a nature monument island of nesting Magellanic penguins, with a marked path from the jetty and no barrier between you and the birds. Runs in the southern summer only, cancelled for wind, and worth rearranging a day for.

  2. 13:00

    Late lunch back in town

    Eat

    The market by the waterfront and the small places around it do fish and the day's stew cheaply. Order the lamb if it is on, and calafate ice cream after it.

  3. 14:30

    Museo Nao Victoria

    Culture

    Full-scale replicas built on the shore, boarded rather than viewed: Magellan's Victoria, Shackleton's open lifeboat, the schooner that took possession of this strait for Chile, and an ongoing Beagle. Take a colectivo north and allow ninety minutes.

With more time: If the boat is cancelled and there is no other sailing, the substitute is the drive south to Fuerte Bulnes, the reconstructed 1840s fort on the headland where Chile first planted a flag on the strait, with the park at Cabo Froward beyond it. The old rookery at Seno Otway, once the easy alternative to Isla Magdalena, is no longer reliable: the birds largely stopped returning after the road and mine work nearby.

Day 3 in Punta Arenas

The cemetery, the mansion museum and the road on

The municipal cemetery is the best thing in Punta Arenas and it is free. The sheep and shipping dynasties built mausoleums the size of chapels along the main avenue, the cypresses between them are clipped flat into green walls, and behind the grand section are the plots of the Croatian, British, Swiss and German immigrants who did the actual work, each community keeping to its own row.

There is also a small shrine to an unnamed indigenous figure that people leave offerings at, and a memorial to the Selknam, whose disappearance from Tierra del Fuego is bound up with the same sheep companies whose tombs stand a hundred metres away. The place is not subtle about any of it.

The Braun-Menendez mansion on the way back into town is the other half of the story, kept as it was left, with the furniture, the billiard room and the wallpaper all in place. It is the regional museum now and it is very good on how a handful of families came to own this end of the continent.

Buses to Puerto Natales leave through the day and take about three hours; flights north go in the afternoon and evening.

  1. 09:30

    Punta Arenas Cemetery

    Visit

    Opened in the 1840s and grown into an avenue of family mausoleums between clipped conifer walls, with the immigrant communities in blocks behind. An hour, unhurried, and take the far paths as well as the main avenue.

  2. 11:30

    Museo Regional de Magallanes

    Historic

    The Braun-Menendez house, kept furnished as the family left it and now the regional museum. Wool money in physical form, plus a clear account of how the estancias, the shipping line and the politics fitted together.

  3. 13:15

    Last lunch by the market

    Eat

    Centolla if it is in season and fresh, lamb if it is not. The places near the artisan market are the honest ones and none of them looks like much from outside.

With more time: With a spare afternoon, the Museo del Recuerdo on the northern edge holds steam engines, farm machinery and a set of reconstructed 1870s houses from the estancias, which fills in what the mansions leave out. The Zona Franca is on the same road if you need a warmer coat before Torres del Paine.

Before you go

Getting in and getting around

The airport is 20 km north of the city and takes flights from Santiago, from Puerto Montt, from Ushuaia and from the Falkland Islands, plus charters to Antarctica. Santiago is three and a half hours away and is how almost everyone comes.

There is no road north to the rest of Chile. If you drive here from Puerto Montt you go through Argentina, and if you drive to Ushuaia you cross the Strait of Magellan on a ferry and then re-enter Argentina. Buses to Puerto Natales, for Torres del Paine, take three hours and run several times a day.

The city is compact and walkable, laid out on a grid around one square, and the only reason to take a colectivo is the ship museum or the airport. What limits walking is not distance but wind.

The wind, and the weather

The forecast is not worth reading. Rain, sun and a gale in a single afternoon is standard here, and the wind off the strait is the thing that will define your visit: strong enough in summer to make a short walk hard work and to cancel boats at short notice.

December to March is the season, with long days, temperatures around ten to fifteen degrees and the penguin colonies occupied. Outside those months the boats stop, the birds have gone and the city is quiet, cheap and cold.

Take a windproof shell whatever the month, and a hat that will not blow off.

Eating and drinking

Magellanic lamb, cooked for hours on a frame beside an open fire, is the regional dish and appears everywhere from cheap kitchens to the smart restaurants. Centolla, the king crab, is the other one, and the season is roughly July to November, so out of it you are eating frozen and paying the same.

Calafate, a small dark barberry, goes into ice cream, sours and jam. Local legend says anybody who eats it comes back to Patagonia, which sells a lot of it.

The city has the southernmost brewery in the world and it does tours by appointment. The beer is decent and the claim is the point.

Where to stay

Within a few blocks of Plaza Munoz Gamero, which puts everything except the ship museum on foot. The old mansions on and around the square include a hotel and a club, and staying in one of them is cheaper than it sounds outside January.

The seafront has newer hotels with a view of the strait, and the view is genuinely good: tankers, naval ships and, on a clear day, the mountains on the far shore.

Money and the free port

The Zona Franca on the edge of town is a duty free zone selling electronics, outdoor gear and whisky at prices well below the rest of Chile, and it is genuinely useful if you have arrived in Patagonia underdressed. Bring your passport.

Cash is worth having for the small boats and market stalls, and there are plenty of banks in the centre, which is not true anywhere further south.

Punta Arenas is a company town whose companies are gone, and that is what makes it interesting: a marble cemetery, a Latvian widow's palace and a duty free mall, all on a windswept strait that stopped mattering in 1914.

North is Puerto Natales and Torres del Paine, three hours by road. East across the water is Tierra del Fuego and eventually Ushuaia, which is a long day and a border. Both are worth the trouble.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is Punta Arenas worth stopping in, or should I go straight to Torres del Paine?
Two nights here is a good use of the time and most people give it none. The cemetery and the Braun mansions explain the whole of southern Patagonia, and Isla Magdalena is the easiest penguin colony to reach in Chile. If your days are truly tight, take the first bus to Puerto Natales and stop here on the way back instead.
Punta Arenas or Puerto Natales as a base?
Different jobs. Punta Arenas has the airport, the history and the museums; Puerto Natales is three hours north, much smaller, and exists to get people into Torres del Paine. Fly into one, sleep in the other for the park, and do not try to visit the park from here.
When can I see the penguins?
Roughly November to March, when the Magellanic penguins are ashore to breed. Outside that window the island sailings do not run at all. Even in season, wind cancels boats regularly, so give yourself two possible days if this is the reason you came.
Can I get to Antarctica from here?
There are charter flights from this airport to the Chilean base on King George Island, which is how the fly-and-cruise trips start, and they are expensive and weather-dependent. The ship-based expeditions almost all leave from Ushuaia instead.
Can I change this plan?
Yes. Copy it, move the penguin boat to whichever morning has the better forecast, add the fort at Fuerte Bulnes, drop a museum.