Flying over the Andes into Santiago is an impressive end to a long flight from Sydney.
We spent a couple of days in Santiago, exploring the city and nearby mountains before boarding the Zaandam for a painting workshop down the Chilean coast, down to the Antarctic Peninsular then back up the East Coast of South America to Buenos Aires.

The Andes from our hotel window

Giant Condors from a ski resort above Santiago

Ski Resort – minus snow

The port area of Santiago has some interesting businesses, colorful shops and unattractive vessels.

Mountains of containers dwarf the local fishing boats

Leaving Santiago and heading south took us through interesting country under the backdrop of the Andes.

Stilt houses in Castro on the island of Chiloe

Castro – beautiful wooden boat takes shape.

Empanadas

Fishing Boats – Castro

Patagonian farm shed

Rio Simpson

Rock walls – Rio Simpson, Patagonia

As we headed south the country became less inhabited, the mountains higher and the temperature cooler. The most common habitation was fish farming settlements.

Ice started to appear in the water and we began to see glaciers.

  

Some ships never made it out of the labyrinth of channels through the fjords

Carefully stacked containers on the docks at Punta Arenas

Southern Chile is cold, wet, salty and windy – buildings tend to be functional rather than decorative.

Punta Arenas

Shivering Cormorants

Replica of Shackleton’s modified dingy that took him and five of his men, through mountainous seas, from Antarctica to South Georgia Island

Ushuaia – the most southern town in the world

Ushuaia’s isolation meant that building materials were limited to what could be easily transported. They did some fancy construction with corrugated iron.

The pan America Highway starts in Alaska and ends in Ushuaia, where this tiny Citroen had just arrived, in the process of transporting a family of three 200,000kms around the world.

Mt Olivia behind Ushuaia

Tierra del Fuego lighthouse