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Published: November 11th 2007
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We have just finished a year of travelling in the tropical climate of Southeast Asia.
Two months ago we were riding on top of elephants through humid jungle.
45 days ago we were lying on a beach drinking from young coconuts.
One month ago we were sweating it out at a market in Bangkok, buying T-shirts and flip-flops.
So why did we just spend a day-and-a-half on a bus to get as close as possible to Antartica?
We finally made it. Ushuaia. The last city at the end of the world. The place where Magellan found his shortcut between the oceans. It´s where Darwin named a canal after the boat that brought him here and then called the natives miserable, subhuman beings. The same natives whose fires lit up the coasts and gave the region it´s name,
Tierra del Fuego. Maybe they looked miserable because it is so cold here, and they were only wearing loincloths.
Our journey here was a sureal 36 hours. We drove through the flat, deserted fields of Patagonian desert most of the way, with brief interludes of boomtowns spawned by the oil industry. It doesn´t make for very good eye
candy out the immense windows of the ultra-modern, double decker bus, and time seemed to lose all meaning as we drifted in-and-out of consiousness with our seats tilted back. This was especially true during the 2 hours that it took for the sun to go down. There is so much sky in a place with no defining geography. The sun works twice as hard to fill up all the empty space with color. At first it appears as though an oil painting is melting over a slowly diminishing candle. As the candle sinks deepr and deeper into its waxy pool at the horizon, so too does the color fade and drip away from the sky. Yellows and oranges run together to form deep pools of red, which then slowly drain away to leave trails of purple and greenish hues. And always the canvas becomes darker and more obscure.....
......or maybe that was just a hallucination I had from eating yet another sugary snack provided by the bus company.
The journey was not supposed to have been so long. 18 hours into the ride, after a bus switch in Rio Galllegos, we hit our ferry crossing at Punta Delgada
Windy Crossing
The ferry over the Straits of Magellan where a long line of vehicles were waiting to get across the Strait of Magellan. The wind was incredibly stong - it blew our bus back and forth on its axels like a rocking chair - and we were informed that no ferry would run until it calmed down. There was a busy cafe where all the vehicles´occupants were watching futbol, eating, and drinking beer, so Suz and I went inside to join them and wait.
.......and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait. For 6 hours.
We ate a sandwich. We watch Germany in a World Cup qualifier. We watched an English backpacker try to turn his gymbag into a kite. We took a 2 hour nap on the bus. We came back to see the Brit still working on the gymbag. By the time the ferry finally showed up we felt as if we had been hiding from a hurricane our whole lives. And it´s not that the wind had subsided to allow the ferry to work, everybody just ran out of patience and said screw it. After a seriously rocky half-hour ride across the strait, we were once again on our way.
I´m not
Ushuaia
The view from our guesthouse sure who was in charge of dividing up this land between Chile and Argentina, but whoever it was obviously had something better to do than take the job seriously. It appears as if he drew a line straight down the middle of Tierra del Fuego and said "right boys, let´s go have lunch." To go from Rio Gallegos to Ushuaia you must cross into Chile, and then cross back into Argentina again 3 hours later. Driving by bus there is no way around it, and it means stopping 4 times to go through customs. Everyone tries to make it as easy as possible, but the frustration on the faces of the bus workers from herding cattle everyday really shows.
So finally, at 2 O´clock in the morning, we were snapped out of our meditative trances and dumped off at a gas station at the end of the world. First impressions? Cold. We jumped into a cab and headed for the first guesthouse that was open. Luckily it had heated floors, and despite how much we had slept on the bus, we passed out from the sheer exhaustion of the ride.
We spent our days in Ushuaia eating in
restaurants and admiring the end of the Andes Mountain range. It essentially has the appearance of a mild Alaska; snow capped mountains that loomed high over vast stretches of old-growth forest and crystal clear rivers. All the trees are covered with "old man´s beard", a light-green fungus that hangs like tinsel and covers trunks like freshly fallen snow. There is also another strange disease that has afflicted most of the trees here, one that causes huge bulges at random intervals down every branch. The two together make the forest look like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, maybe something called "The Cat in the Hat freezes his Ass off at the End of the Earth."
A lot of the extreme scenery has created seemingly endless bays, inlets, islands, and channels. Sea lions, penguins, and a multitude of seabirds have made the secluded areas their home, and on a boatrip into the Beagle Channel we were able to get up close and personal with them. Bull sea lions would battle over their harems of women, Imperial Cormorants would be constantly moving nests to avoid parasites, and large, red woodpeckers would be, well, pecking wood. Their activity helps to alleviate
the rather raw and bleak feeling that the grand scenery alludes to.
Tierra del Fuego also has something else in common with it´s sister in the Great White North: king crab. Almost every night Suz and I would trek out into the frigid night air to pay homage to the alien looking creatures, swept off the floor of the icy South Atlantic and deposited on the menus of dozens of seafood restaurants. They are on display in tanks- much like Maine lobster is at home- awaiting their demise at the hands of the next customer. It´s not the cheapest thing on the menu, but it is alot
cheaper, and the difference in taste from getting it in the frozen section at the supermarket kept us coming back. We dabbled with the king crab cocktail, the king crab salad and king crab steamed and served with every sauce imaginable, but our favorite was the
cazuela; a tomato broth casserole that had a few vegetables and an overload of crab meat. The recipe varied a bit from place to place, and the thicker the broth was the longer that savory, salty flavor would linger. A
cazuela of octopus and king crab
Camping Out
A street shanty set up to demonstrate before elections was something we will not forget for a long, long time.
It´s an election year in Argentina, and the cold weather in Ushuaia has definetly not frozen the political fervor. Even in a tourist town like Ushuaia rallys are held every day on plaza corners and paraded down the streets. One group has built a tiny shanty town in the middle of the main drag and burn wood in oil barrels to keep warm at night. Christina (the current president Kirchner´s wife) is already slated to win the presidency, so most of the action surrounds the local issues, things that are way over Suzanne and I´s heads. Still it´s exciting to see the protests everyday, and all the spontaneous activity is in stark contrast to the overly organized and highly regulated rallys of the United States.
Ushuaia is, despite all it´s breathtaking landscape and amazing seafood, not exactly worth all the effort it takes to get down here. It has to be said that half the reason for coming was to get as close to Antartica as possible. Ushuaia knows this is why it gets so many tourists, and has definetly set up the sourvenir shops to cash
Cazuela
This dish is filled with king crab meat and octopus. And a few peas. in on all the attention. This has of course taken away from the awe of looking at the map and realizing where you are. Instead, Suz an I will use it as a beginning, for the Andes Mountains and all it has to offer on our way into Peru. Active volcanos, enormous glaciers, ancient cities, and wine producing valleys. There´s nowhere to go but up.
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Corina
non-member comment
miss y'all
Gosh, I've seen a few amazing sunrises in my life, but even in a picture, yours tops them all! Its been so great to read about your experiences, the writing is so vivid and tangible. Thanks for helping me take a mental trip to all these amazing places ;]