Ushuaia (ooh-shwai-ah) is Argentinas Southern most city. It's not connected to the mainland and you have to go through Chile to get to it. It has a beautiful location sandwiched between glacially carved mountains and the Beagle Channel, also glacially carved. The place reminded me a lot of some coastal towns I've seen in Alaska, including Anchorage. The towns claim to fame is that it's the end of the world. There are signs every where stating it. I don't really get the claim though, as 60 km South, across the Beagle Channel, is Puerto Williams, Chile, and further South of that is Cape Horn and then there's Antarctica too!
Our first day in town we didn't do a good job of getting going early. We wanted to go up to the local ski center Cerro Martial to view the glacier there and see the views, but we missed the bus, since we didn't know there would only be one per day. The weather was perfect and we didn't have days to waste, so we took a taxi there with the plan of walking back. To save more time we decided we'd take the chair lift , which turned out to be a joke! The people below us were walking the trail about as fast as we were going! It only saved us about 15 minutes of flattish walking each way and cost $13.50 per person! I don't know how anyone could ski here, must be mostly kids. After we got off the lift (which here is called an air chair!), we hiked around for a few hours. We could see views of Ushuaia, the channel and the surrounding islands. The glacier wasn't as impressive as the views. It was a series of three cirque glaciers, which are essentially bowls of ice in a mountainside, the last remains of an enormous glacier that once filled the valley. We continued a ways beyond the end of the trail over boulders and snow fields to the base of the glacier. As soon as we got there fog closed in on us and the view was gone. It was very strange to see it happen so quick! Even with the view gone it was very pretty, and being up there reminded me of so many hikes I've been on in Alaska.
The second day we took a sail boat tour of the Beagle Channel. It was an expensive tour, but so much more fun than the cheaper motorized boat tours! They only take small groups of people and we rode with a French family that moved to Mendoza four years ago to start a winery. They invited us to come for a visit one day! On our boat ride we got to see Ushuaia and the surrounding mountains from afar, sea lions and lots of sea birds. We stopped for a short hike on one of the small islands. This part was especially interesting. The plants on the island are consist mostly of colorful mosses and lichens and some short bushes, most of them growing only one millimeter per year. The only reason they grow here is because the seeds are brought over by bird poop! We also got to learn about how the natives Yamana people used the islands for shelter. They spent most of their lives squatting in a canoe or next to a fire, so they had weak feet and legs and a funny look to them. Darwin referred to them as the lowest barbarians! I think they were quite smart to be able to survive 6,000 years in such a harsh environment. They used bird bones as straws to extract water from the crevices in the rocky islands! Instead of wearing clothes, which would have been damp all the time, they covered their bodies with sea lion and whale blubber, natural weather proofing! And they brought fire with them everywhere, even in their canoes! This is where the name Tierra Del Fuego (Land of Fire) came from, the first explorers to the area saw all of the fires from the natives on their approach! During our walk a storm was brewing, and winds and rain were beginning to roll in, this made for an exhilarating ride back! Most people sat inside, but Jeff and I sat on the left side of the deck in our rain suits getting pelted with waves, wind and rain. The extreme winds pushed the boat forward at a 45 degree angle, the right deck of the boat was skimming the water! My heart was racing a few times, as it seemed the boat would tip, but we had a good captain and made it back safely to the harbor. We sure enjoyed the ride!
On our last day in town we visited Tierra del Fuego National Park, which is 12 km west of town and where the end of the Pan-American Highway is located. I wore my Alaska T-shirt, and good thing because we met Chris, who lives in Willow, Alaska! He probably wouldn't have initiated a conversation with us had it not been for my shirt. It turned out we had plans to hike the same trail, Cerro Guanaco, so we went together. Jeff and I have gotten along amazingly on this trip, but it was really nice to have someone else to talk to for a change. Chris was an interesting guy, a pilot with his own bush plane! He promises to take us for a ride when we get back to Alaska and he'll also share with us moose and caribou meat, which I've never had the opportunity to try. The trail was pretty steep and we had to go through a nasty mud bog. We got up to our ankles in mud and one of my shoes almost got suctioned off. For some reason I found this part of the hike hilarious, and couldn't stop laughing. (: From the top we had awesome views of the far off snow capped mountains and ice fields in Chile, the network of glacier lakes that make up the park and we could also see Ushuaia, the channel and the islands beyond. We also saw a fox who hangs around looking for scraps! Jeff was a bad boy and gave him peanuts! It was nice to know that this is our last hike for a little while, our knees are dead!
On our ride back from the park, we met a girl who was going on a evening tour to visit the local beavers. They are an invasive species that have destroyed the ecosystem on Tierra del Fuego and the plan is to eventually get rid of all of them! They were introduced in the 40s when about 50 of them were brought from North America because the government thought it would be good to establish a fur trade. Those 50 beavers multiplied into 100,000! So now you can go on a beaver tour in Ushuaia with a man who has a dog that is friends with the beavers and they all come out to play with the dog is around! So that would be fun to see next time, if the beavers are still there!
Today we got up early for a flight to Buenos Aires. We had originally planned to do this part of the trip by bus! It's about 3,000 km or 1,800 miles! Cesar, the guy we hiked with in El Bolsón recommended the flight to us, which is turned out to be cheaper. (: We will be here two night before flying home on the 7th. We are staying in San Telmo at Hotel Bolivar. It is a cool old building from the 20s, and much of the building seems to original and it's cheaper than the dorm beds in the popular hostels in town! Tomorrow we plan to take ourselves on a walking tour of the center and we will feast on delicious grill meats and homemade ice cream.
Your stories make my heart happy. I still have pictures of Ushuaia taken from the plane window when we landed. Did you go to the world's southernmost post office and get your passports stamped? I am in Barcelona today, which reminds me a lot of Buenos Aires...only there is a lot more of the good stuff here. The steaks aren't as good though.
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