Days 2-N: Waiting in Punta Arenas
2026-03-01 - Reading time: 14 minutes
This is an experiment in me writing down my thoughts in bullet form, and then using an LLM to first ask me clarifying/expanding questions, and then to flesh out all the intermediate text so it is more readable. Let me know what you think, should I default to this going forward? Or is the writing style too LLM-tastic?
Also, if this is especially painful or you're just curious, you can click above to view the original bullets instead.
Funny story
Due to a shortage of hotel rooms in Punta Arenas, I heard from Cath months before arriving that I’d be bunking with Doug, another member of our Antarctica expedition. Doug and I were essentially strangers; we had never met in person and had only exchanged a few brief text messages before the trip.
We arrived at the Punta Arenas hotel around midnight. I tried texting and calling Doug to let him know I was heading up, but there was no answer. Since a large block of rooms was being checked in at the same time, the front desk was pretty relaxed about the situation. I showed them my ID, used a bit of "I’m-supposed-to-be-here" charm, and they handed over a key without any suspicion.
Standing outside the door, I had a choice: do I knock loudly and potentially startle a sleeping stranger, or do I try to sneak in? I really didn't want to wake him, and I figured there was a chance he might remember we were rooming together. I decided to let myself in quietly. As soon as I opened the door, a chorus of exuberant snoring confirmed that I hadn't woken him up yet.
However, I immediately ran into a problem. Looking over at the second bed, I saw stuff laid out all over the mattress. It was a clear sign that Doug had no idea he was supposed to have a roommate. As he later confirmed, Cath, our trip organizer, hadn’t mentioned to him that he’d be sharing the space.
I quietly cleared a spot and settled in. I have a habit of sleeping while hugging a pillow and keeping another between my legs for comfort. In the dark, this arrangement apparently looked like a literal "pillow wall" to Doug. At one point in the middle of the night, I heard him rustle around. I opened my eyes to see him sitting up, staring at me in the darkness. We stayed like that for a few seconds—just two strangers looking at each other in a dark hotel room—before he simply laid back down and went back to sleep.
Doug later told me it took him a second to process what was happening, but he still didn't actually know who I was. It wasn't until he got up to use the bathroom later that night and spotted my orange Crocs—a distinctive item I had shared a photo of in our group chat earlier—that he realized his mystery roommate was me.
Ed: Back to normal human writing
Funny story:
- Not enough hotel rooms for us each to have our own, so I was bunking up with Doug who had arrived in Punta Arenas a few days ago.
- Coming into the hotel, it was around midnight, and I texted/tried calling Doug to remind him that I was bunking with him, no answer...
- So I convinced the hotel staff gave me a key for the room.
- First choice: do I loudly announce my presence by knocking/waking him up?
- "Maybe he remembered that I was going to be rooming with him? In which case it won't freak him out"
- I really don't want to wake him up...
- So I snuck into the room, and at least knew I hadn't woken him up by the exhuberant snoring still going on.
- Then I found what I'd been most fearing: stuff laid out on the bed next to him, telling me for certain than
- Can't hear that through a wall
- Just a row of pillows, what's with that, pillows snuck into my room?
- We'll figure it out in the morning, then later that
Waking in Punta Arenas felt like a new world, but a lot of that was the adrenaline fueling me to go downstairs and meet
In the morning, we finally had a proper introduction and a good laugh about the midnight stakeout. It wasn't the most conventional way to meet a teammate, but it certainly broke the ice for the rest of the trip.
Punta Arenas is a medium sized town further south but still in Chile. It had an airport with a direct flight to Antarctica.
But due to bad weather at the Antarctic airfield, our flight was delayed a few days so we had some time to kill.
At first we extended our hotel rooms, but then we grabbed an AirBnB so we could all stay together but still have some space.
Park
This is the town square in Punta Arenas. It has a statue of Magellan and you're supposed to kiss the bronze toe for good luck and safe passage. We all declined though I wonder what kind of luck a french kiss would bring?
Pa beach
A view of the coastline and one of the biggest buildings in the town.
Cemetary in pa
Fancy
And they did fancy crypts (tombs?) as well.
Not so fancy
And they had options for the Japanese economy style sleepers as well.
Selfie on Magellan
We went to a naval museum which had recreations of the boat Magellan circumnavigated the earth on in the 1500's. But not really, because he died along the way while they were trying to kill some natives in the Phillipines. Good times.
Beagle
They also had a replica of Darwin's the HMS Beagle. Darwin had a much better time of it than Magellan. Funny story, he was more excited about doing geology work on the trip. The biology stuff was second fiddle for him.
What a flex.
Boaty!!
One of the most important pictures here. But for this I need to roll the clock back a bit.
Back in 2016, the British government decided to drum up public interest in their new icebreaker ship they were finishing. They started an internet poll to decide the name. A BBC correspondent submitted the name "Boaty McBoatFace" as a candidate name. The internet (and Reddit in particular IIRC) caught wind of this and flooded the poll with 100k plus votes.
Boaty McBoatface was the winner! But sadly, the British government got cold feet and named the boat the "David Attenborough" instead. But in our hearts, this ship has one and only one true name.
Trees
This day, we went to a historic fort recreation, but mostly enjoyed the hiking trails along the Ocean.
At about this point in the hike, I saw some of the interesting foliage and made the joke: "Let's play a hiking game, whoever tries the most number of native plants along the hike wins."
Little did I know, that this would be a prescient game, since I was about to take on the role of "native plant taster." Though this will be more apparent in the Wynn's video when they upload it later (starting in April I think).
Flower
Nuff said.
Tougy
Tougy modeling for my shot here.
Berries!
The name of the berries that we eventually found (and ate increasingly more of each day we went on hikes and found that it was compatible with our systems).
They look quite a bit like blueberries. They varied from sweet to mildly bitter.
Birds
Not sure what kinds of birds these are (forgive me Uncle Mark). But they we chowing down on some roadkill rabbit.
This was on the way to a national park, which I amazingly navigated us to using Google Maps (and got us to a locked gate after an hour drive)...
Hike1
After jumping over the locked fence, we encountered a beautiful little bridge and stream. Someone was camping here, but they weren't home.
Hike2
Lunch
Cath made us some yummy chicken, avocado, salsa sandwiches. With some Chilean round bread which is dense and hearty. Verry yum. Nikki insisted it tasted like Irish shortbread (sourbread? s-something bread?).
The yellow pack there is my day pack (Emily's duffel sack). While massively oversized, it's great to store a bunch of puffy jackets and very lightweight. Been working great.
Road
We stuck to this road most of the way in (trying to get to the national park). Turns out we were on the back half of the park, so never got to the visitor center etc.
Big
But going back, we decided to off-road it. Apparently this is Mike's speciality. It's even got it's own name: "The MH way" after his initials.
So we cut off the road, went through a copse of trees and came up on this field.
It may not look like much here, but each of these mounds was a giant boulder of a squishy moss like substance. The textures, colors, biomes, smells everything was so alien.
Apparently this is normal for bogs, but I was high on life at the time, and the experience was really eye-opening. I got a little excited and I think that will come across better in the Wynn's video of me hamming it up a bit.
Bog2
Doesn't this look like something right out of Mordor (Lord of the Rings)?
The consistency of this stuff is like pudding with some curds mixed in.
When you dig up a little on your finger it smells Exactly like the black water sewage tank smell of an RV park. Fascinating how nothing but plant matter can produce such similar smells to a very different input.
Berries
This is one of the other kinds of berries we ran into. These were especially odd because:
- They grew out of these tumorous growths on the trees.
- They didn't smell like anything on the inside.
- They didn't taste like anything.
- They had a texture somewhere between a grapefruit and a plastic bag/brainy/cellular thing.
We learned later that the native Mapucho people used to eat these just as a textural filler (maybe some carbs?) despite the non-flavor. Their diet had so much meat/protein that this was a welcome snack.
House time
And one shot of us at the house chatting on the couches, sharing things, talking about anything and everything.
Seeing this I wish I had gotten some more pictures of the house, but it always feels weird to stick cameras in people's faces. Luckily, everyone signing up for this particular trip knew they were going to be on camera so it doesn't feel too awkward.
