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Published: April 15th 2007
After 3 months apart Stacey and I reunited in Buenos Aires to travel through South America which we had not managed to cover previously due to a lack of time.
We stayed in the Obelisco Hostal where we had happy memories from before and spent 5 nights enjoying the wine, steaks and tango.
Whilst in BA we managed to watch the film 300 - I wish we hadn’t (rubbish).
After 5 days recuperation we headed south.
Puerto Madryn
We left Buenos Aires and caught the bus down to Puerto Madryn in the hope of catching some whales there.
The landscape down the East coast from Buenos Aires to Puerto Madryn and indeed longer onto Rio Gallegos is very barren and inhospitable. In total, approximately 40 bus hours of flat landscape stretching to the horizon. No trees.
We knew that we would be unlikely to see whales as we were too early in the year, we also knew that we would be too late to see penguins as they would have left for colder climes. A couple days before we arrived a few people had seen Orca and there would definitely be
sea lions there and possibly even some elephant seals.
We did indeed see some sea lions and elephant seals, many llama, sheep a fox (complete with rabbit in mouth) and a cat (with collar).
Not far from Puerto Madryn are Trelew and Gaiman, both are Welsh enclaves although Gaiman has stronger Welsh ties. Excellent pot of tea and cakes enjoyed at this location.
From Puerto Madryn we headed off to Ushuaia via Rio Gallegos.
Ushuaia
We managed to spend around 10 days in Ushuaia. Ushuaia is the most southerly city in the world. There is quite a lot to do in Ushuaia, while here we trekked through the National park and spent many days looking around town and enjoying the scenery.
We also endured possibly our hardest challenge to date. We decided to trek up to Lake Esmerelda and spend a night camping in the snow. With all the gear it would have been no problem. No gear and no idea, meant we spend a good few hours trekking through bog and snow before arriving cold and wet at a location were we tried to light a fire with frozen wood before retiring to
our freezing ¼ man tents for a light frosting before gradually freezing further throughout the night.
The scenery though was great and definitely worthwhile.
Leaving Ushuaia itself seemed to be rather difficult, partly due to the charming atmosphere and also due to inconvenient transport. Buses leave at 7am and the boat only goes from Puerto Williams (in Chile where there is nothing) to Punto Arenis once a week and as such we had to wait a few days before sailing over to Puerto Williams.
Our hostel in Puerto Williams was in fact someone’s house where we pretty much spent our entire 24 hours on the island before our cargo boat to Punto Arenis.
We are about to pull into Punto Arenis having spent 36 hours from Puerto Williams. The Beagle channel has provided an icy beauty splicing through towering snow capped mountains with little visible wildlife. We have been served regular square meals comprising many broth and soup variations, followed by meat and vegetables. These meals have been punctuated with ham and cheese sandwiches, tea, coffee and latterly our entire biscuit reserves.
We are still travelling in the same group, Maja providing comical entertainment
by falling over regularly and Tomas’ crude yet amusing observations.
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