Following the Dream

Christian February 28th, 2008

Ushuaia is the southern most city in the world. It is located on the Beagle Channel, and has jagged mountains as its backdrop. It is one of the main jump off points for Antartica. There are many cruise ships that dock in the harbor, often filling the streets with tourists.

Our trip here started with a very bumpy plane landing. It was a bit nerve racking, but we made it okay. The hostel we were staying at was La Posta. This is a hostel located a bit out of town, but was very very nice. We had a double room and shared a bathroom and kitchen with only one other room. It was like having our own apartment, complete with cable TV. We got to watch VH1, which was nice, especially the reality shows such as Rock of Love and Hogan knows best. We were pretty lazy for the first few days, with our only objective being to find a discount cruise to Antartica.

We walked the streets, stopping in every single tour operator office asking for the best price. There were last minute deals, however all seemed to fall outside of our budget. We wish we could have went, but we figure it is something we can do later in life. Most of the people who go are older to very old. We would have had to give up a couple of months on the road for a 11 day cruise. We figure now that we have the time, we will take the couple of months and leave the 11 day when we have to worry about vacation time. Although we were tempted, very tempted for one cruise that cost $4000. A couple of thousand over our “Antarctica Limit”, but it was a great deal.

Instead of going to Antarctica, we spent the next couple of days exploring the city and national park Tierra del Fuego or Land of Fire nearby (including a trip to a penguin colony).

The first day we spent exploring the city we did the touristy things such as taking our picture next to the end of the world sign and buying and sending postcards. The city itself is okay, but the backdrop of the mountains is spectacular. We also quickly learned two things. The first is that our hostel’s 20 minute walk to the city was more like 45. The second is that the dogs on the walk are no where near as nice as dogs in El Calafate and El Chalten. The dogs here are demons. Most of them are in yards behind fences, but they still try to eat you. There is the occasional stray, we would say that 10% are actually nice. They look nice at first (part of their evil plan) and then once you get close enough the devil comes out of them and they want to eat you. Some of the lovely satan dogs in the fences (which are not built strong enough to keep them in) were two Rottweilers (we called them the demon brothers), we also passed by two pittbulls, also trying to eat us, a furious toy poodle, among other demon dogs. We even bought treats for these dogs the first day, thinking we could befriend them, it did not work out too well. One of the strays tried to eat Casey for dinner.

Enough about the dogs, the city has a wonderful harbor, with a ship wreck in it. We booked an excursion to a penguin colony for the next day. The weather was beautiful, and we were hoping for the same for our excursion.

To get to the penguin colony, we had to sit on a tour van (no shocks it seemed) for hour and a half on a dirt road. We stopped for a view of the beagle channel as well as a spot where the trees grow sideways due to the strong winds in the winter. Once to the Estancia, we took a 15 min boat ride to the island of the penguin colony. As we got closer to the island, we could start seeing dark patches covering the beaches, our guide let us know that the dark patches were actually all penguins! There were hundreds, once we were 100 meters or so, we could start seeing penguins swimming in the water next to our boat. We got off the boat on the beach. The guide instructed us to stay together and told us how to approach the penguins and how close we could get to them. There were hundreds on the beach. It was amazing, watching them waddle around and jump in and out of the water. We then took a walk on the island to see the nesting areas and other parts. I would have thought that the penguins would stick close to the beach, but they actually go far up into the island, making a network of paths in the tall grass. The only downfall of the trip was that our time with the penguins was limited to about an hour.

The following day we took a trip into the national park “Tierra del Fuego”. It is a beautiful national park. Casey and I enjoyed the views of the Beagle Channel, as well as a couple of hikes. We saw an active beaver colony, which is an eye opener. They are a plague down here to the forests, taking out large sections of trees. They were introduced to the area in the 1940s for commercial purposes and have multiplied in numbers exponentially. Our guide from the previous day said they weigh 25-35 kilos (60-80 pounds or so). The park was amazing and we wish we had more time there. We did get to see the end of Route 3, the southern most highway.

We enjoyed our stay in Ushuaia, it was what we needed. It felt like we were settled for a few days into a temporary “home”. It gave us time to relax before grabbing the last two plane tickets for the next couple of weeks and heading back to crazy Buenos Aires.

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