DAY 31 - PUNTA ARENAS - NAO VICTORIA OPEN AIR MUSEUM and THE USUAL SUNDAY PURSUIT

After a tasty start to the day

we're tempted by the invitation to penguin-spot at Seno Otway

But only very briefly as all of the online warning are true and we're disappointed to be corrected 2 minutes further up the road that it's closed after all.

So we regroup. To the excellent Nao Victoria open air museum 

for reconstructions of Magellan's mighty Nao Victoria which carried him around Cape Horn,

HMS Beagle

complete with beagle figurehead!  

the Ancud which brought the original colonists to P.A.,

and the James Caird (which we almost miss), Shackleton's lifeboat which carried six men to South Georgia after the Endurance was crushed by ice

It's Sunday, with a steady stream of people making family visits.  

Not unusual, you say.

At the cemetery?!

And what a ceremetary. Vast family mausoleums in marble or polished stone, with ornate statuary, ranged on 'streets'

It looks as though you have to out-do the neighbours even in death.

To the Plaza d'Armas with its own tribute to Magellan

some gracious buildings attesting P.A.'s affluent trading past

and gulls and cormorants (though not the hoped-for dolphins or whales!) for our afternoon coffee stop