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As it turned out, we couldn't go to the Torres del Paine park on time, as although our new stove had doubtless been delivered (Chile's postal system is very efficient) it was locked in the post office which was closed for Easter.... ahh.... hadn't thought of that! Not to be deterred, we instead hired ourselves some wheels (a very pimpy Grand Cherokee jeep!) and headed south into Argentina to visit the southernmost city in the world, and very nearly the furthest south you can get before getting to Antarctica, Ushuia.
The roads in Patagonia are long, there's very little traffic and the scenery is breathtaking in it's bleakness. Roads stretch on for hundreds upon hundreds of kilometres through barren land where only cattle live - it's some of the best grazing land in the world apparently. To say we enjoyed the drive is an understatement.
Ushuia lies on the southern coast of the Tierra del Fuego (Land of Fire), a large island at the southern tip of the south American continent, roughly divided between Chile and Argentina. The island is seperated from the mainland by a narrow channel, the Magellan Straight, which we took a 20 minute ferry ride
The road to nowhere
If you drive in Patagonia, especially in the far south, you will see this. LOTS of this. across. I don't know why it's called the Land of Fire, but one reason might be the colours of the trees in autumn, the time we visited. The colours ranged from yellow through orange to deep reds and made an incredible spectacle as we motored on.
We were initially planning to get all the way to Ushuia in one day, but as it's a 12 hour drive which took us a little longer than planned we ended up staying at another lakeside camp site in a village called Tolhuin. Just as well we had two sleeping bags each (we'd rented extra ones in Puerto Natales for the National Park) cos this place was COLD! We got a fire going and were soon toasty an tucking in to some nice campfire grub - no instant noodles for us!
The next day we were on our way to Ushuia once more. We'd encountered concerned faces at the Argentine border when we told them we were heading for Ushuia - they said that it had been snowing and we might not be able to get through without snow chains - but confident in the abilities of our 5.2 litre beast we
On the way to Ushuia
A picture postcard around every corner... ploughed on regardless. Lucky fuel is cheap in Argentina! As we climbed the mountain road towards Ushuia the roads get increasingly worse, the snow thicker, but with much care on our part we got through without incident - save the time that we got stuck in the snow at the roadside for a photo stop.... Luckily I've got my Land Rover in similar situations in sand and was able to get us going again quite quickly.
Ushuia itself is a tourist town and a large working port, being the hub through which all of the goods for the Argentine portion of the Tierra del Fuego are shipped. The town is much more attractive than we were expecting - I'm not sure what we were expecting exactly, more of a frontier town I guess, which it's not. It has nice shops, museums and...... MEAT! If there's one thing that the Argentinians love, it's meat. Lamb, beef, you name it - you can get it there, and top quality for rock bottom prices. As such, our plan to have a light lunch and a look around town before heading off to make camp in the nearby national park soon changed to
sitting in an excellent restaurant and eating possibly the best lamb we've ever tried, and certainly the best meat we've had since leaving the UK. Yum. After lunch we checked out a local museum, a very interesting one at that, describing how the European settlers decimated the indigenous populations when they arrived, both intentionally and accidentally (bringing with them diseases that the locals had no resistance to).
Camping in the national park was another pleasure, and not nearly as cold as we'd imagined - we must surely had been lucky with the weather, as this place had the capacity for some serious cold. Again the natural beauty of this barren land took our breath away, the fire coloured vegetation enveloping the mountains right up to the snow line. We found ourselves a camp site away from the track road though the park by a beautiful aquamarine coloured lake, one of Em's favorite things about our visit. Whilst there we made the acquaintance of some fearless eagles, who were very interested in some salami we had. We didn't see many mammals in the park as they're much better at hiding themselves, although the place is teeming with rabbits. Whilst in
the park we were able to take in one of the longer walks along the shore of Lago Roca through some of the aforementioned autumnal forest, a strange experience as you don't normally get dense trees growing that close to a beach. We also visited an apparently active beaver colony no less than twice, but twice the beavers weren't home, much to Em's dismay.
We ended up keeping the car for a few more days and seeing some more of southern Argentina, and covering some serious mileage on unpaved roads - if we hadn't been in the jeep, we would have been in trouble on more than one occasion! We visited Rio Gallagos, a town on the east coast of the south american continent, and the next day drove all the way across to the west coast and back to Puerto Natales in Chile, most of the way on unpaved roads. You can see what a mess we made of the car! A jetwash later and we'd returned the car, collected the stove from the post office (phew!) and were ready to set off for the national park the following morning. As a strange twist in the tail of
this particular part of the adventure, the car decided that it now had an alarm, such that whenever I tried to open the doors a siren went off, and refused to start. Hmmm. Didn't do that when I parked it last time! Luckily all this happened in Puerto Natales so we left the beast in the hands of the car hire guys capable hands and set off back to the hostel on foot before he started asking too many questions. I don't suppose some water from the jetwash could have got into the electrics? Nah....
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Macaya
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CHile
Chile a great Country Chile the most beatiful country