The morning sun catches the mountains, and before the wind starts to blow provides a perfect backdrop to the day. This morning we resume our drive on the End of the World route south through Chilean Patagonia.

We drive northeast out of the park, again on washboard dirt roads then turn south and west back through Puerto Natales where we stop for lunch. Then back on the road for the 3 hour drive to Punta Arenas. The land through this stretch of Patagonia is mostly flat, with tortured conifers and vast grasslands. Occasionally we pass fields of pastel colored lupines or snowy meadows of low growing ground flowers

There are a couple of burned out cars well off the road but very little traffic. There doesn’t seem to be any legal speed limit most of the time, and we haven’t seen a single policeman on our drive.

We pass occasional guanacos and rheas. The Rhea is similar to the African ostrich, but smaller, and has three toes instead of two. Both animals blend well into the landscape and can be hard to see

As we near Punta Arenas, we are driving along the Straights of Magellan, and we see larger seagoing ships using this protected route around the tip of South America to avoid the brutal sea between South America and Antarctica famously known as the Drake Passage. We see replicas of Magellan’s and Drake’s ships moored at a maritime museum on the edge of town.

Tomorrow we cross the border back to Argentina, and head toward Ushuaia – the end of the road.