Blogs from Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, South America - page 55

That pesky fox. 700g of georgeous dark chocolate, two fine salamis, fresh baked french bread and a packet of olives were its haul from our tent on the first night of the valproaiso circuit trek near Ushuaia. Lesson learned, never leave food in the tent vestubule. Thankfully we had enough food spare to complete this 4 day trek in beautiful mountain scenery near Ushuaia (though pasta and brekfast bars gets pretty monotomous). It was pretty hard going, with large areas of bog, some steep high passes and a general lack of paths. We didn´t realise until one day into the trek that the map only had contours for a small amount of the area, which would have made navigation a bit of a nightmare without GPS. When not trekking Ben and I entertained ourselves by skinny ... read more

There were no roses or candy this Valentine´s day. Griff and I woke up in the morning, walked across the room to the other from our tiny twin beds, wished each other a Happy Valentine´s Day, and headed to the bus station for our seven hour bus ride to Punta Arenas. The trip was only a portion of our voyage to the end of the earth, Ushuaia, which is on the southern tip of South America. It is one heck of a journey, requiring us to head inland from Argentina, cross the border into Chile, hop another bus from Chile back into Argentina, and drive another twelve hours with a transfer between one junky buss to another. (Each buss gets squishier and older the farther you go.) Most of the twelve hour ride is over gravel ... read more

There's no much to say about Ushuaia, just look at the pictures... read more

Some pics of our last day in Ushuaia. It was picture perfect- Alejandro said they only get about 5 a summer like that. We went out on the sailboat "If" to Island H in the Beagle Channel, the last island in Argentina (there are still some islands that belong to Chile before Cape Horn) Island H is a kind of refuge with a lot of tundra plants even though it is close to sea level.... read more

I had imagined "the end of the world" totally differently. Especially when an elderly english couple on the plane ridiculed me a little for not getting off in Punta Arenas and instead flying on to Ushuaia (WHAAAAAT the ..... are you going THERE for????) I wasn´t quite sure what to expect...and maybe because of that I was rather pleasantly surprised. The flight into Ushuaia was definately one of the best flights ever. The weather was perfect and we spent 3 hours cruising high over the Andes. The view was spectacular; High mountains, glaciers, rugged peaks, perfectly shaped volcanoes and lots of lakes were below us. Then, desert! For hundreds of miles! (What a surpise I thought - hm...guess I hadn´t done my homework and knew nothing about Argentinas Pampa). After 3 wonderful hours the descent into ... read more