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Published: February 1st 2015
Lake in Tierra del Fuego National Park
Lake (Roca) at the base of our hike into the national park in the morning.Having safely arrived in Ushuaia, the southern most city in the world and commonly known as the "End of the world" we were awed by the landscape. This is why we came to South America for our adventure. The mountains are stunning and expansive, snow capped and formidable.
Where BA was about steak, Ushuaia is all about the King Crab! Every restaurant has it on it's menu in some form, even the Irish pub we found had a King crab salad and pasta dish. So, when in Rome....we've feasted on King crab for the majority of our nights here.
Part of the reason we decided to go to Ushuaia as our next stop was because it offers some challenging day hikes to help prepare us for our treks later in Patagonia. Although the mountains we hiked were not overly high, the trails were steep and provided the legs with some good preparatory work.
Ushuaia is the starting point for many Antarctic expeditions, we looked into some last minute deals, in the end we decided we wanted to spend our time and money elsewhere. For those interested, we were quoted $5000 USD per person for a 14 day cruise.
As discussed in a previous post, there are currency restrictions in place within Argentina. The offical rate of exchange to the USD is about 8.5, however, there exists a "blue" market where you can openly get Pesos for upwards of 13 to 1. We were unsure if the demand for USD would exist outside the capital of Buenos Aires, as we heard that lesser populated areas would offer lower rates, closer to the offical exchange rate. After asking around in Ushuaia, we were directed to a stuffed animal/teddy bear store to exchange money at the blue rate. Now, as an accountant I generally walk by these stores and wonder how they are able to pay the rent, let alone make money from flogging these dust collectors. I mean, how many fuzzy bears or white rabbits can you possibly sell? Well, this store was fully equiped with a cash counting machine and offered exchange rates comparable to those we received in BA. Surprisingly, there were 4 or 5 other customers in the store at the time, though none seemed interested in fluffy creatures nor was there a child in sight. Maybe teddy bears offer a viable business model after all!
You definitely get a sense of the isolation down here, it's the ruggedness of the terrain and the lack of population. We really enjoyed our 5 days here hiking and trekking through the park and surrounding area.
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Mairead
non-member comment
great idea
Glad to read ye are having such a good time. Looking forward to the next entry. Take care!