Land of the Fire

Tierra del Fuego - without a doubt one of the most hardcore names in the world!

After arriving in Argentina we were at a bit of a loss with what we actually wanted to see here. We couldn't handle seeing another pretty-colonial-style town, and weren't in the mood for the heat up north. So that left us with one option - splurge and head down to the southernmost-non-antarctic point in the world. Not that this was an undesirable option, we'd really been wanting to get as far into Patagonia as possible, it was just the cost of getting there that was putting us off.

A bit of research and advice from other travellers taught us that flying was the best way to get there. If we'd have taken buses, it would have taken us about 3 days to arrive and cost a lot more. So we left as much luggage as possible in our hostel in Buenos Aires, and travelled light down to Ushuaia and Tierra del Fuego. It was a nice easy flight, and only really got interesting towards the end, when the landscape changed from empty desert to massive snow covered mountains. When we left the airport at Ushuaia we were instantly hit with the incredible scenery there - Ushuaia really is just a little town absolutely surrounded by jagged snow capped mountain ranges.

We quickly realised that we'd need a few new clothes to handle the temperature down there, so our first day was occupied by finding Maryanne a new warm jacket (no complaints from her!).

Because we'd splurged to afford the tickets to Ushuaia, we'd decided we were going to seize the opportunity and make the most from each day there. We started with a boat tour down the Beagle Channel, consisting of visiting a few islands, some sea lions, and the "famous" Ushuaia lighthouse (which I'd never heard of before). Next stop was to try and find a nearby glacier, which meant a chairlift ("aerosilla" in spanish!) up a mountain behind the town. When we got to the top we couldn't find anything there except a nice view of the town, there was no sign of a glacier anywhere. It did give me a chance to struggle through massive snowfalls to find the worlds southernmost-non-antarctic geocache, though.

Next day we headed out on a 4wd trip to a nearby lake. This was a lot of fun, our drivers were a bunch of jokers, who I'm pretty sure kept deliberately getting their cars stuck in strange places just to see how they could get them out. Lunch was a BBQ beside the lake, where we got our first taste of Argentinian choripan. Basically, it's a sausage in bread, but with chorizo instead of sausage and a roll instead of bread.

The next excursion on our list was to do some cross country skiing. I'd never been before, but after learning downhill skiing in Chile I was really eager to try. It took me a little while to get into the swing of it, and it didn't help that we took a path heading right up a mountain at first. But when we got back on the flats and into the rhythm of it, I found it really relaxing and enjoyable.

After this, we went to check out the Tierra del Fuego national park. Our collectivo driver gave us a choice of places he'd drop us off at the park, so we chose the place he described as "the end of the world". Turns out the end of the world is full of organized tour groups, so we quickly left to hike to another part of the park. Away from that area everything was much more peaceful and private. The highlight for me would be a group of woodpeckers we ran into on a path heading to Chile.

Another thing we did at Ushuaia was to spend a day downhill skiing at Cerro Castor. This was only my second time trying to downhill ski - and it didn't really go as well as the first! I really struggled on these slopes. But that said, the ski field was much more interesting than the one we went to near Santiago.

The last thing we went to do in Ushuaia was to take a night dog sledding trip. This was fun, but unfortunately really short.

Our last day in Ushuaia was spent checking out a local museum set in the ruins of the old Ushuaia jail, which was pretty interesting. One of the better museums we've been to.

So that's how we spent our time in Ushuaia. We had stacks of fun there, and we were a little sad to leave. But I'm really glad we decided to spend the extra and travel down there - I'd have really regretted it if we didn't go!