The Casa Azul hostel has some pretty good security and David had the foresight to wait with the front door open while waiting for the taxi. Reception wasn't open and without keys we could only open the external gate once, so getting back in to chase a late taxi wouldn't be an an option. As it turned out, our booked taxi was at least 5 minutes late when the young guy who booked the taxi happened to wander past. He phoned another driver who promised to be with us in 5 minutes. True to his word, he arrived and we were on our way to the Puerto Montt airport. The driver must have been told that we were late because he was really putting his foot down, even though his old car didn't seem road worthy enough for the speed that he was doing.

We arrived at the airport in about 30 minutes, so we actually had plenty of time for the check in for 10:50am Sky flight to Punta Arenas in Patagonia. All the flights seemed to board very efficiently with separate lines for the different seat rows ensuring that people at the front of the plane wouldn't skip the queue and slow the whole process down. Our flight actually left 10 minutes early, which was a new experience on a plane. It was a good flight although there wasn't really a view through the clouds to the scenery we had hoped to see below.

The flight arrived on time in Punta Arenas and after picking up our bags and getting a map from the tourist information booth, we were on a shuttle towards the town centre. All was going well until we were dropped off. For some bizarre reason we had the wrong address written down. Hospedaje Betty used to be at the address we had, but it had moved about 7 blocks away so with our bags on our backs we walked the 15 minutes to the new address.

The town is flat so it wasn't that bad of a walk even if it was a bit blustery and a few spots of rain in the air. Betty was there to meet us and gave us a nice colourful twin with a heater, television and private bathroom.

Our two immediate needs for today were laundry and arranging a tour to see King Penguins. The former was easy enough, we found a laundry that would wash and dry in 3 hours. The penguin tour was a bit more difficult, we went round a few companies who tried to sell us their tours to see Magellan penguins until we eventually found the Laguna Azul agency that all the companies booked through for King Penguins. We were offered a discount for paying cash so we reserved our spaces on tomorrow's tour and agreed to come back after getting more cash from the hostel.

We decided to have a bite to eat first though and went to Cafe Almacen Tapiz, for a pita bread sandwich. The salmon with goat cheese seemed too good to miss out on so we both had the same. They also served some very good coffee according to Maria, David was sticking with the local Austral beer.

After our meal and waiting for the sudden downpour of rain to stop, we walked along the Costanera back towards our hostel. In the distance we saw two guys swimming, or at least splashing around in cold water - they must have lost a bet because no one in their right mind would get in the freezing water of the Magellan Strait.

We picked up some more cash and headed back into town again, paid for the penguin tour, picked up the laundry and went supermarket shopping. The tour tomorrow is all day, 7.30am to 10pm, and there are no meals included so we needed to at least get stuff for sandwiches and snacks.