Cerro Sombrero (subtitle: No Room at the Inn)

The friends we met on the boat to the glacier had recommended to us that we might enjoy going to see the Penguins on Tierra del Fuego (one of the larger islands near Punta Arenas).  The normal way to go there is to take a day trip from Punta Arenas via an organized tour, but when we looked into it we decided that since we had already rented a car, we should just get there on our own steam.  We found a campground on the map, located in Cerro Sombrero, which is on Tierra del Fuego.  That would put us relatively close to the penguin park for the next morning.

We crossed the Straits of Magellan by ferry (for some reason I got a completely disproportionate thrill from knowing that we were crossing the Straits of Magellan--it somehow felt historically epic....)

The coolest part of the ferry crossing was that we spotted a bunch of dolphins--really cute black and white ones!  They were jumping around and playing, and came really close to the ferry.  I tried so hard to get a good picture, but didn't manage it.  If you look closely in the picture below, you'll see one under water just behind the vertical white bar.  They were speedy, and would only surface for a fraction of a second before diving down again.

When we arrived at Cerro Sombrero (sorry, I had to make a whole blog entry about this primarily because I think it's so fun to say that name.....) and made our way to the campground, we found a lovely sign posted by the Chilean government, saying that the large empty field in front of us was the future site of a campground.  Ha!  We might have considered just pitching our tent there anyway, but there was nowhere to get water, and there weren't even any trees to hide behind as a "bathroom."  

Meanwhile, the ramshackle village of Cerro Sombrero is a tiny gas town that sports one hostal (only one room left with a shared bathroom, and a whole host of rough looking men on the porch.... umm... no thanks) and one hotel.  We opted for the hotel, only to find out that all their normal rooms were booked.  They hemmed and hawed for awhile and then told us that they had a tiny shack out back that they could rent to us.   Here are our lovely quarters....

And here, in stark contrast to our vistas from the past several days, was the view out our front door--accompanied by a sharp permeating scent of gas everywhere.

I dare say this was substantially more upscale than Mary and Joseph's quarters, but the comparison did not slip by us unnoticed.

We cooked our remaining backpacking dinner over the gas stove in the clapboard kitchen complete with brick wallpaper.  The floor sloped dramatically down towards the left, but J was able to fill the pot with water with minimal slopping over the side.

 The shack only had two beds, so luckily we were set up for that and the girls slept on the floor with their thermorests and sleeping bags.  In reality, we were grateful to just have a place to stay.

For the record, the girls thought this place was fantastic!  :-)  You can see the hotel just barely in the background, hidden behind the "back 40" shacks.