El Fin Del Mundo

---

---

Steves...area!

Ushuaia, Tierra Del Fuego, our most southerly stop. A surpisingly rough ferry crossing escorted by tiny black and white dolphins, like miniature Killer Whales bouncing through the surf. Then more grassy vastness, just as we're starting to get close to the bottom the forest begins, and my first sighting of a Beaver, then another... then despite there being 180,000 kicking around, not one more! Forests and snowy cold looking hills surround Ushuaia, its bay calm and smooth one day, then a wild swirling mass of white the next.
The indigenous people who once lived here are long gone, but on our walks you can see the molosc-covered midden heaps left behind in the sheltered bays, forests now mostly covering where villagers once lived. Long days and short nights, expensive seafood and blasts of snow mark the days. A touristy city, mostly coffee shops and outdoor clothes places, however it does feel like a place at the bottom, not quite resting on the edge, but not part of the rest. Looking forward to warm short days.

And Vik's:
And so we finally made it to the end of the world. The end of the southern world at least. Ushuaia, the world's most southernly city. Unless you count the world's actual most southernly city, the one that happens to be next door, in Chile. But for reasons that are not entirely clear, nobody does. So that's okay then. Ushuaia, end of the world, box succesfully ticked!
And if it were all about Ushuaia, then maybe - just maybe - the 60 hour round trip (not to mention the three weeks worth of budget) to get there might - just might - prove a little disappointing. Because whilst it is (kind of) the end of the world, there is something about the army of cruise ships that line the harbour there that detract somewhat from any feeling of that. But our venture to the far reaches of this continent perhaps demonstrates fittingly-well that our trip has been much about the journey and less about the end point. Hours travelling through vast nothingness and wild desolation, that you can perhaps only best appreciate when you are immersed in it. And a little bit more so once you are out! And I didn't get to see these alleged beavers...think Steve made them up.

---