End of the World

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Tierra del Fuego

We´re in Ushuaia, a town that markets itself as ¨The End of the World¨and a look at a world globe confirms that it is indeed a lot further south than just about everything else.

The south western corner of South America, in both Chile and Argentina is generally known as Patagonia and that word has always conjured up thoughts os snow capped mountains, huge glaciers and beautiful lakes and the reality hasn´t disappointed. Anyone we subject to the inevitable slide show at the end of our trip will see that we have taken photos of almost nothing else.

But theres a lot in between that, although, not as photogenic, is still part of this amazing place.

One of the first things we have noticed about every town is hundreds of stray dogs. Very friendly, very well fed, dogs just wandering the streets ready to follow anyone. I suppose they´re hoping to be fed but they don´t make it obvious, although we disappointed one faithful friend who had followed us for half an hour, waited 20 minutes while we shopped in the supermarket and continued to follow us to a vegetarian restaurant 😊

Siesta - most shops open at 10.00am close at 1.00pm then re-open at 5.00pm and close at 11.00pm. Great for shoppers but for the workers it means going to work twice in one day and dinner very late at night. Explains why breakfast is such a light meal. Croissants seems to be the main ingredient, with a coffee.

Fast taxis - Slow buses
Taxi drivers all fancy themselves as the next Formula 1 champion, driving as fast as they can on roads where keeping to a lane is just an ignored suggestion.
Buses, though, travel according to very strict rules and low speed limits.

Well, thats so far in Argentina and Chile. We´re expecting the speed to increase and rule abiding to vanish once we hit Peru.

Flat Plains - in between all this amazing scenery the landscape is very flat and very dry. Lots of sheep grazing and an obvious complete absence of dams for the livestock. Melting snow channeled into streams providing a guaranteed water supply.

Forgot to tell you about a very funny thing that happened a couple of weeks ago.
We were on the first day of our hike in Torres del Paine National Park. Being a little paranoid about security considering we were carrying a couple of thousand dollars in travellers cheques and cash, we decided to carry the money with us instead of leaving it with most of our luggage back at the hotel in Puerto Natales.
Julie was entrusted with all the money and she safely packed it in her backpack for the walk to the Towers. Well, for 3 hours of that walk it rained - a lot.
We weren´t worried about a little rain as we had ¨waterproof¨covers for our backpacks. Our shoes and socks were soaked so a nice hot fire at the refuge at the completion of our walk was a welcome sight . Shortly after that we realised that Julies waterproof cover had not lived up to it reputation and all our money and travellers cheques were stuck together in one soggy mass. So we spent the next couple of hours waving US $20 notes over the heat of the fire treading that fine line between damp and flames, all the while fending off remarks about Aussie tourists having money to burn. We told everyone we had just printed it and the ink hadn´t dried yet.
Some people actually looked like they believed us.

This past few days in Ushuaia has been good - a cruise around the Beagle Channel in remarkably calm water seeing penguins and albatross, lots of other birds and a big colony of sea lions. A really friendly group of people and a fun and informative tour guide made it a special day.
On Sunday we did a 12 km walk through Tierra del Fuego National Park from a lookout with views of the snow-capped mountains around the Beagle Channel to the shores of the Channel itself.

We shared the bus back to town with a group of people aged 20 something. One girl from Holland commented that it was great we were travelling at our age because her parents wouldn´t dare, and obviously they were about the same age as us. So now we can´t decide whether we´re adventurous, young at heart, old farts ... or just old farts 😊


We´re in Quito now, trying to upload this from the hotel. Tried all day to add more pictures but the system wasn´t kind to us so we´ll add a few more next time.

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Comments

[jacinta]

helping with your decision
ALL OF THE ABOVE!!! adventurous, young at heart, old farts!!

[sarah]

funny money
yep that was pretty funny about the money although someone just tells me my comment title of 'funny money' is actually not very funny at all! I'm laughing whilst writing this but someone in the background is rolling eyes!.... guess who! from seh (ps - great to hear about your travels and that you are both safe and sound xxxx)