To the End of the World..and back on up

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After the windy buffetting we had all endured in Torres, it was a very welcome stopover in Punta Arenas, with aircon, TV and comfy beds, to the extent that some people barely left the hotel. Chile´s most southerly town, it is also a tax free haven with some good duty free deals to be had (well, by Chilean prices in any case) and although not beautiful by any stretch of the imagination, has some cracking restaurants. Following one of the Lonely Planet´s suggestions, Matt and I found a delightful local restaurant tucked away in the middle of a residential street, offering amazing meals with true character; a beef stew for starters, lamb hot pot for main and then mouthwatering raspberry mousse to finish. The town also sits on the shores of the Magellan Strait, a narrow stretch of water named after the famed Portugese explorer that bridges the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and is known for the choppiness of its waters. Traversing this on our way down to Ushuaia, we were favoured with a smooth crossing and a glimpse at the local black and white dolphins that inhabit the Strait.

Crossing back into Argentina (there are entirely too many Chile/Argie border crossings around this leg of the trip - had 4 borders to deal with in one day!), we traipsed on down via a boat graveyard, driving along a road that had been converted into an emergency airstrip during the Falklands war to Rio Grande, possibly one of the most depressing places I have ever seen. Most of the group crowded into a gym hall for the night, but the prospect of a sweaty, snoring sardine tin of bodies didn´t really appeal so those hardened among us roughed it in tents, and enjoyed one of the best nights sleep yet! Moving swiftly on from our thankfully short stopover, we made our way down to Ushuaia, the most southerly city in the world and capital of the Tierra del Fuego province.

Situated on the Beagle Channel, Ushuaia is a thriving port and tourist base for those looking to head further south to Antarctica. Based in a rugby club some way out of town, again some of the softer among us opted for the indoor option while others remained element harded in our tents (admittedly here was one of the only nights where I have been a bit cold in a 2 season sleeping bag!). Fantastic hosts as they were, the site owners treated us to a barbeque of epic proportions with gargantuan steaks and sizzling sausages, washed down with litre bottles of the local brew. Being the epitome of restraint and underindulgence, I finally had to call it a day having wolfed down 4 steaks (easily over 2kg of meat!), before having the obligatory hour of kicking a rugby ball around with the guys. A local specialty is King Crab, an absolute beast of a crustacean with a pincer span of over a foot, although we were advised to avoid any shellfish due to possible risk of instant death via some red plankton found in pockets in the waters nearby. Eating at a reputable and suitably certificated seafood restaurant, we decided to chance it in a seafood salad, and found it to be delicious and pleasantly non death - inducing.

Beside providing a wealth of food (another day I had some more fantastic lamb from an all you can eat asado that left me fit to burst), other fun activities in Ushuaia include visiting the most southerly prison in the world (again superlatives and this continent seem to go hand in hand) where you can be locked in for the night in a roleplay designed to create a genuine experience (we gave this a miss). Now a museum/art gallery for the most part, in its time the prison housed a diverse bunch including political prisoners and serial child killers. Due to the remote location and the sparse landscape, security was minimal as anyone who escaped would either die of exposure or come back voluntarily to avoid such a fate. Another must do in the town is a trip up along the Beagle Channel, where you get to see sea lions, cormorants and the most southerly (from hereon in abbreviated to TMS) lighthouse. A longer cruise offered a stop at a penguin colony, although with the chance to see penguins further up the coast I gave this a miss, and decided to head on back to town to eat more fantastic lamb. Patagonia & Argentina in general have ruined meat for me anywhere else now, and for this they will never be forgiven. Unless of course I move out here.....

For our last day in Ushuaia, a number of us went for a nice leisurely hike around the Tierra del Fuego national park, trekking along the picturesque windswept shores of Lapataia Bay and enjoying the local flora and fauna (the dog orchids in particular were beautiful). The Bay also marks the end of the Pan American Highway, a road running 17,848km all the way up to Alaska upon which I have travelled several times, in North, Central and South America, and a route which my former tour guide and esteemed colleague Paul is planning on traversing via motorbike in the coming years. Back to the rugby club in the evening, we were treated to yet more divine food (it never ends!) in the form of a lasagne cooked by Damo and Kaz, which was without doubt one of the best meals yet enjoyed on tour (high praise indeed considering the competition!).

The next leg of the tour marked a radical change in group dynamics, due to nearly half the group flying directly to Buenos Aires (so named the Princess Flight), primarily to avoid 5 long driving days with little to break the monotony. This certainly created a stronger team spirit in those of us who remained (one gripe with the tour is 30+ is just too many to keep in one cohesive group), with more music on the truck, more space (very very welcome as the weather steadily moved from temperate down south to unbearably sweaty on approach to BA, and tempers can start to fray after 15 hour drives!) and fewer personality clashes. En route we stopped off at Puerto Madryn for some late night beach party action (I had to come home early at 5am to be up for sightseeing the next day - getting old!) and pretty sunsets over the course of a couple of days, of course accompanied with a massive rainstorm while we were erecting our tents. Under the wing of a very well informed local tour guide, Silivia, we went around the Valdez peninsula, getting very close to a colony of Magellanic penguins (awesome), snorkelled next to sea lions (big, noisy & lazy - love the lifestyle!) and seeing the colossal elephant seals from afar. With an average length of 5m and weighing in at over 2 tonnes, the bull seals are highly impressive and yet are still dwarfed by their predators, orkas (killer whales), who pick them off the beaches while they lie there. Sadly no orkas were sighted, nor any other whales (just out of season..typical) when we went for a boat cruise to find them, so I will have to return when there´s more chance of them appearing.

Along with taking in the sheer scale of nothingness that the most part of Patagonia entails, the region incorporating Puerto Madryn is also interesting as it was colonialised by the Welsh. Stopping off for tea and cake (lots of both), we spent a couple of interesting hours in Gaiman, where Welsh is the primary language and Spanish secondary. With 2 Taffs on tour, the excitement levels were running high (although the locals were more fluent than our girls in the celtic tongue) and we celebrated the day with an entire truck set of Welsh music, from TJ to the Manics to the WNO, much to the delight of all but one of us. In our normal democratic style, following her complaints, we turned the tunes back up and all started to sing along.

Of further interest on tour was possibly the most well guarded site in Argentina, Monumento Natural Bosques, to everybody else a petrified forest. Having missed out on the opportunity to see one in the States, I was quite looking forward to this, but was fairly underwhelmed by what amounted to lots of fallen trees that have turned into rocks. We were briefed extensively before our walk around to not bend down (shoelaces were duly checked) as we could appear to be stealing tiny bits of the forest, and were monitored constantly by a highly vigilant lady with a pair of binoculars from the main office. I was half tempted to hit the floor to see if a sniper was ready to take me out, or at least for a full SWAT team to be deployed, but instead I walked, got bored and went back to talk to one of the officious guards about the wonders of Argentina (women, meat, scenery...).

Moving on up the Atlantic coast, we stopped at a couple of fairly basic and uneventful sites for our first freecamp of the tour, a beautifully warm night where many of us just slept in our bags under the stars. With the truck getting very reminiscent of a sauna in the afternoons, we were very glad of the extra space offered by our absent fellow voyagers as the temperature rose steadily. On the drive into Buenos Aires it was in the region of 38°c with absolutely no breeze and everyone was getting decidedly cranky. Passing through the obligatory insipid outskirts, we arrived in a heat haze at the capital with an air of excitement coupled with mild exhaustion.

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