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Published: October 29th 2011
Day 16 – Thursday 27th October
We did not want to leave our nice warm bed this morning to get on the bus, but a new adventure is calling. We had a quick breakfast, grabbed our backpacks and settled the bill. Luckily there was a taxi across the road, he was friendly and we discussed kangaroos and koalas from Australia and penguinies (penguins) from Argentina. When I say discuss he said Australia – Kangaroos & koalas and then said Argentina – penguinies, that is one of the best conversations we have had in Spanish. We arrived at the bus station about 7.50am for the 8.30am bus, we are now starting to see other backpackers and have realised we aren’t travelling with too much stuff. I can’t believe the amount of stuff other people are carrying, I have been saying to Scott we have to downsize, but Oh My God, you should see the size of some peoples bags, humungus.
The bus this morning is only three quarters of an hour late, pretty good compared to the last one. The couple in front of us are from England and are doing a long trip like us. It was good to talk to
them because they are having the same issues with the prices as everything is about double what the Lonely Planet is suggesting. We have heard inflation is at about 25% so things are more expensive than we expected, even free museums are now charging.
We are slightly apprehensive about today’s trip as we need to go through Chile to go back into Argentina to get to Ushuaia at the bottom. This means two border crossings in one day, thankfully our bus conductor/waiter/cleaner/border negotiator was on the ball and the first stop both the Argentinian exit and Chile entry were in one building. This was relatively quick with only our hand luggage being x-rayed and then we were on our way again.
Shortly getting into Chile we had to cross the Strait of Magellan, which is the main shipping route around “the horn”. The stretch of water is still quite a distance so the only means is by car ferry. We only needed to wait about ten minutes before boarding and once on the car ferry we had to disembark for safety reasons. We encountered this on a ferry in Vietnam and the reasoning is that if a big freighter was
to run us down you would have more of chance to survive standing on deck than you would siting inside a bus….good rule. It was freezing cold standing on deck but there is something amazing standing on a boat crossing a legendary stretch of water heading towards an equally legendary land, (yes Scott is a geek). Got to the other side without a freighter hitting us and we were finally in Tierra del Fuego, “the land of fire”. The original inhabitants of this cold wet, windswept land wore no clothes as they figured that due to all the rain, the clothes would only keep them constantly wet, so instead they spent a great deal of their life hanging around fires, and that is why the early explorers called this the land of fire. From a population of 1000 in 1860 only 1 full blooded person survives today, and funny enough the main reason for their demise was attributed to western colonisers making them wear clothing, which ultimately carried diseases.
From this point on we were now in Chile and the road is terrible, it is only dirt and thank goodness it wasn’t raining otherwise the bus would have been really
struggling. It is very slow and hot in the bus with no air, they open the roof vents and the air coming in is freezing, but at least it is fresh, but then it is closed again and it is back to boiling. Along this stretch we changed conductor from the older experienced man to a young guy. About 3 hours or more but it seemed like an eternity, we arrived at the Chilean/Argentinian border, this time they were in separate buildings so we were stamped out of Chile and drove a couple kms down the road to the Argentinian border where we all got off the bus again and were stamped back into Argentina. Back on the bus and we then crawl a few metres and we all have to get back off and there is mass confusion as nobody seems to know what is happening and it was suggested we have to change buses, but it was all because our luggage has to be removed and x-rayed. So once again we have to pile off the bus and drag all our luggage out, line up and have our bags x-rayed and then restored on the bus before heading
off again.
The road immediately improved back to tar and the bus could go faster, and this is maybe because we are now back in Argentina. After two very C grade American films one of the old boys on the bus wanted “romantica” music, all the Argentinians groaned especially the young ones. The first cd was folk and then the romantic stuff followed, the old boy was very proud of himself and there was a lot of chest thumping, well really a lot of loud yakking. It was funny when the conductor had to temporarily turn the music off to make an announcement and the whole bus erupted into cheers and applause, the old boy stood up and shouted back at them all deeply offended. We eventually stop at Rio Grande and all the locals piled off the bus as this is large town all the tourist thought it was probably a 20 minute stop. Something seemed to be happening outside so I jumped off the bus to decipher this new mystery, I found out we had to change buses so I quickly told Scott and the others as the other bus appeared to be a free for all. It
seems with each new bus the quality is getting worse and this one is no exception, where is the leg room! Poor Scott is cramped into the window seat because of my claustrophobia and I need to be in the aisle seat and so the next stage begins and it is about 3 more hours. About an hour from Ushuaia we started to see our first glimpse of the Andes where they end and go into the ocean. It is so beautiful winding through the mountain ranges then we see the lights of Ushuaia cradled between the port and the mountains, just as daylight has almost completely disappeared.
We arrive in town about 9.30pm and thankfully we have pre-booked our accommodation so we go to grab a taxi but he had no idea where our hotel was located. Well we are backpackers so on they go, and we trek uphill, to our surprise it was only about 10 minutes up the hill and we are only carrying about 18 kilos, Scott has about 25 kilos.
The hotel room is great with a separate living/kitchenette area with a dining table so we can have some meals in. As it is late
we go to the nearest food place and ordered some empanadas, Scott thinks I have ordered six large ones so we stand there for a while laughing that we will have enough for our whole stay here. When we get them it is all OK and just enough for one dinner, so we go back to the nice warm room to eat them and watch some crappy TV before going to bed around midnight.
Day 17 – Friday 28th October
It was so great to be able to sleep in till 8.30am we are still struggling with the whole late dinner thing, and combined with the early rises it is knocking us around a bit. We both find that a day sitting on our arse on a bus so much more tiring than climbing mountains, and yesterday travelling through two border crossings just added to the stress.
As this was our first day of 6 in town we should just take it easy and acclimatise and just enjoy walking around and seeing some of the low key sites. Ushuaia is regarded as the southern most town in the world, although technically it isn’t, but if it is or isn’t
doesn’t matter because it is such an amazing setting. The town is wedged between snow caped mountains and the “Beagle Channel”, which is one of the legendary passages around Cape Horn. The day thankfully was fairly clear but thick black clouds hung around some of the mountains so we just knew that we would soon be in for some rain.
Went for a walk down the main drag checking out all the shops and Shelley nearly had a fit when she discovered a “Christmas store” selling Christmas decorations. I could see her mind clicking over working out how she could get a huge container load of decorations home. Wandered down to the wharf area in town to check out prices for a cruise down the Beagle Channel and discovered that because it is still “low season” they are prepared to discount. They generally leave in the morning or afternoon but the arvo ones you have more chance of seeing wildlife so we resolve to jump on a boat in a couple of days.
Decided to have a look at the local museums and discovered that one of them doesn’t exist anymore, which seems to be a regular problem at the
moment. I was then able to drag Shelley up to the local Maritime Museum. The lonely planet reckoned that the entry cost was $AR50 each to enter but when we paid we discovered that it was in fact a ridiculous $AR70 ($AUS18). We decided that since we were here we might as well do it, but we weren’t overly happy about it.
The museum was housed in the old Goal, and was three museums in one, a maritime museum, a museum to Antarctica, and a city museum, as well as a small art gallery. It ended up being more interesting than we had anticipated and spent over three hours looking over the exhibits. The bulk of the museum was dedicated to the establishment of Ushuaia as a prison back in the late 1800’s and the life of prisoners marooned in this harsh environment. The prison had 4 wings radiating out from a central hub and two had been renovated as museums, one was closed off as an administration block and one was left in its original condition. The amazing thing with this was walking through the museums which had huge gas heaters blasting away and how it still felt cold,
but it was like a freezer when we walked into the unheated/unrestored section. It was one of those OMG moments, when you thought how this was spring and how cold it must have been during winter. We had just read letters from prisoners and how they said the hardest thing to deal with was the cold, and then we had this very small sample of what they were writing about.
Whilst in the museum it started raining and the wind started up. It was 4 by the time we left and the rain had stopped but the temperature had dropped dramatically and it was blowing a gale so we opted to head back to our room. In the morning on our walk the streets were crowded with tourists and shopper but now the streets were near deserted. As usual, the shops were nearly all closed and because of the foul weather there weren’t any silly tourists around…except us of course. Picked up some beer, wine and cheese at a nearby store on the way back to our room and sat up at our kitchen table and had a great late lunch.
We spent the early evening sorting out our emails,
blogs and such, before heading out for dinner. Found a great joint down town that had huge slabs of meat, which was great but what was the best was the huge plate of roast veggies that we ordered with it. It was great having some good quality veggies for a change.
Waddled home at 11.30 once again, cursing how much we had eaten just before going to bed.
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Margaret darlington
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Living Trip
These blogs are great, I feel like I am almost living the dream with you, keep it up