A very early start today to be at the bus station by 4:40 am. Thankfully it hadn't snowed (which we thought might have happened) so the walk was easy. It seemed strange that the bus hadn't shown, and just before 5am a large ute and a people mover arrived. We were told that the city borders had been closed due to a strike. We had seen the strikers in town every day before heading to Antarctica, occupying part of the main street, but hadn't realised that the situation had escalated. The two vehicles were there to shuttle the waiting passengers to the other side of the picket line a few kilometres away.
We made it onto the second of three trips, we were driven to just before the barricade, which was made of pallets and manned by strikers sitting around open fires. We then carried our luggage about 100 metres past the stranded trucks and cars to a waiting bus.
It took about an hour to move everyone onto the bus, so we finally started on our trip around 6am. The bus was incredible dirty, and basic, and without heating. When we reached Rio Grande we swapped into a slightly better bus, which then took us over the border into Chile. The route then took us to the ferry over the Straits of Magellan and onto the South American mainland. There was a shop on the ferry, for some reason all the locals queued up to buy hot dogs .... which explained the strange smell as we walked into the seating area on the ferry.
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| World's largest mobile hot dog stand |
We finally arrived into Punta Arenas about 6pm, and caught a taxi to our airbnb accomodation.just outside the city centre.
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