Tierra del Fuego

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We arrived in Ushuaia in the middle of a snow storm, which whilst slightly unnerving given the fact that it was almost the summer solstice, it somehow seemed fitting for Tierra del Fuego.

Ushuaia is a fantastic place on the shores of the Beagle channel, with a backdrop of the Andes. We had planned to do a three day trek in the mountains behind the town, but after hearing tales of 8 inches of snow overnight from others in our hostel, I decided that one night in a tent would be more than enough! So we squeezed the three days into two, after agreeing that we were feeling fit enough to walk for long days - a decision I started to regret at about 7pm on the first day with a couple more hours still to go.

The mountains were beautiful with lakes and glaciers, the trails empty, and the valleys full of beaver dams and incredibly boggy (land of fire my arse! There is nothing dry enough to burn!). But it didn´t snow, was clear enough to get good views, and it felt good to have made it that far south.

Unfortunately Scott rumbled my trekking contraband - it almost made it undiscovered for the whole of South America! I am still not quite sure what made him rifle through my wash kit, but he was horrified (his pre trip ´weight´ speadsheet flashing before his eyes) to find:
- glass jar of face cream (the glass jar seemed to be what caused the most consternation)
- additional tub of general moisturiser
- 2 bangles (you never know when they might be needed....)
- approximately 20 hairbands
- mascara and eyeshadow (refer to bangles)

This led to a closer inspection of my rucksack in which he found a broken maglite, travel scrabble and a pack of cards (undoubtedly excessive....), journal, hardback A5 notepad, 3 pens and roll of sellotape, clean trousers and two clean t-shirts! If I had left all of that behind at the hostel I could have easily carried another half kilo of rice.... Need to be a bit cuter in NZ.

Anyway, it is a fantastic place. Unfortunately we didn´t have the time or money to continue south to the Falklands (which are shown on all Argentian maps as being part of Argentina) or Antarctica, but it feels suitably wild for the end of such a big continent.

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