[Ushuaia]
Thursday, 29 April, 2004
Just to answer a few of your questions, there is
georgous bush around ushuaia. 80% of tierra del fuego
is like mckenzie country, but down the western coast
where the andies extend to the bottom there is
stunning mountains and lots of lenga forrest. just
like nz beech forrest except not evergreen. so at the
moment all the leaves are falling off and all the
trees are a lovely yellow, orange and red. all
through the valleys. we have great photos of it. it
was a 4 day trek with a day walk up a ski field tacked
on the end. stunning scenery and we were so lucky
with the weather. the two days we crossed the passes
were clear and mostly windless. very very lucky.
most of the roads are shingle around tierra del fuego
- although in ushuaia itself there is mostly concrete
or tarseal. there was one bit of sealed road through
the mountains where they have cut heavily into the
rock to make the road. I guess they had to seal it to
keep it from erroding.
we were both really keen to get over to the island
across the beagle channel that is chile. but there
are no boats that go over there. too much bickering
between argentina and chile to get organised to run a
service over there. there is a port on the island
(puerto williams), but you have to get there from
punta arenas and fly for US$150 or go by a 3 day boat
for US$200. not an option for us. you can probably
convince a local fisherman to take you illegally over
there (not to the port) but just to the island so you
can step foot on it, but its risky and if you get
court you will be well and truly told to leave and
won't be able to come back. not to mention the fine
you will probably be slapped with. not worth it.
there is a tramp near here too (we didnīt go there)
where you walk for 2 hours to the chile-argentine
boarder where there is a sign telling you to stop and
go no further. sometimes there are guards there who
will enforce it, but I think most of the time there is
no one there. so you can jump a metre across the
boarder and back again a few times. but if you do
cross, and get caught, its very bad. you'll be
arrested, and probably even detained.. I don't know.
they are extremely strict about where you cross the
boarders and that its all done properly. a lot of
fighting in the past has kept it this way. so there
is only two places in tierra del fuego where you can
cross. and it takes a long time waiting in queues go
get through all their processing. you have to give
them somewhere where you are staying too, so we
usually just pick a local backpackers out of the
lonely planet to write on the papers.
anyway, our breakfast is being served, then we must
hit the road. take care
love nic
ps, the bikes were a disaster. I don't think they
have had much TLC for quite some time. the seats were
like bricks (very sore butt) and my back wheel fell
off about 10 times in the 1 hour, so we turned back
after getting very frustrated.. in hindsight it was
pretty funny, but at the time it wasn't cause it was
cold and windy and slightly dangerous having your bike
falling to bits underneath you!!
[Ushuaia: post-tramp]
Thursday, 29 April, 2004
Are are out of our tramp now. it was amazing scenery
but freezing cold. and we are very glad to be out of
the tent and in a warm hostel for a night. there was
quite a bit of fresh snow on the hills the last two
mornings. during the tramp, we stayed one night in a
refugio - just like a nz tramping hut (but looked more
swiss cause it was built from logs). it had lots of
mice, but had a pot belly stove which was just great.
it was only a 2 hour walk to get there from the road
end, but we hadn't started walking till lunchtime, and
it looked so cozy we decided to stay. we took flour,
sugar, etc and made deep fried bread then rolled it in
sugar and cinnamon as a treat. yum! the next day
went over a couple of passes in great weather. camped
in the woods and had an open fire to keep us warm.
day three was over another two passes and another camp
in the woods. our day four was going to be over
another pass (totally off the beaten track) but woke
to all the tops being in the cloud, and lots of fresh
snow and miserable day, so we walked out the valley
instead over many beaver dams and peat bogs. the
first peat bog was a novelty (as was the first beaver
dam), but the many after we cursed. the peat bogs are
soooo hard to walk in. you sink down to mid calf (it
has red sphagnam moss on the top and peat underneath)
and you feel so sluggish to get anywhere. very
exhausting, and some of them are up to 1km wide, and
1km long. pretty demoralising. as for the damn
beavers - introduced animal that has totally caused
havoc here. they totally desimate the forrest (we
have good photos of their destruction) and create
large ponds that are terrible to walk around cause of
the hundreds of fallen trees that are all rotten, and
extremely slippery. we managed to hitch a lift back
into town by a guy who spoke good english (he is a
pilot) so that was great. then camped up near the ski
field for two nights. had one day walk up to a
glacier on their skifield, and up to a peak called
cerro bridges which was about 1000m high and had
amazing views over ushuaia, and both ways up and down
the beagle channel. we were so lucky with the
weather. since getting out, we have had overcast,
freezing days with lots of fresh snow down to 400m
quite thick. we stayed last night in the hostel and
went out to an eat all you can eat place for $10nz.
they had lots of meat cooked slowly over the fire
(they start cooking it at 8am and you eat it at 8-10pm
so its pretty tender). they had chicken, lamb (this
was the best), beef and these yummy spicey sausages.
as well as a salad bar, cooked veges etc and a caramel
flan type thing for dessert. it was just what we
needed but we ate too much and I spent most of last
night awake with a sore tummy! oh well!
yesterday we had the day in town. I love ushuaia.
its just beautiful. I would definitely come back if I
had the chance. the beagle channel looks interesting
- it'd be good to have lots of $$ while here though to
take some of the many boats out to cape horn or
through the fiords or to see the penguins.
unfortunately we were a month late to see the
penguins. oh well. next time maybe (when I come back
through here on the way to antarctica........). you
would love it though. amazing mountains just behind
the town, two ski fields close by. great shopping. I
went shopping in the morning yesterday (left andrew at
the hostel) and had 4 hours wandering around the
streets. bought a leather wallet and a leather
handbag. their leather products in argentina are soo
cheap. the wallet was about $25nz and the handbag
about $70. you would pay at least triple that in nz
for something not nearly as good quality. I will
probably post it home. I'd love to buy more. their
leather shoes are pretty good too, but there is a
limit! lots of wee souviner shops with tacky stuff in
them, but some wee treasures if you look hard enough.
didn't buy much else except some handmade chocolate.
but it was great just brousing. found some nice
earrings I liked, but turned out to be megga
expensive. real diamonds I think.
we hit the museum in the afternoon which was
interesting. I spent about 4 hours there. its all in
the old prison and all the information about the
prison is really interesting. they have an antarctic
exhibition too which was ok - but doesn't really
compare to nz antarctic exhibitions I've seen. still
it was a great day yesterday.
Oh, before I forget too, before our tramp we got
dropped out to this place called valle de huskies.
they have an outfit here that have huskies and they
race them in winter all over south america. they also
race in iditarod across alaska. they had amazing
photos on their walls of the various races. we got to
see some of their puppies, their sleds they use in
winter (there's not enough snow yet for sledding so
they use wheeled carts to keep the dogs fit). we then
got to socialise with the dogs. there was over 100 of
them. all cross breeds of arctic varities - some look
like huskies, some like malamutes, one that was a
wolfhound and was the most massive dog I've ever seen.
apparently its half wild so quite dangerous (it was
in a cage while the rest were just on chains). as you
can imagine I got a real blast from looking at them
and patting them all. they were excited to get
attention too. boy they must be tough though. all
year they live outside and have a wee barrel they can
crawl into when its cold. they get fed once a day,
looked like a pound of butter and is probably high in
fat with some meat and veges. so not much. and they
are made to work hard. the owners of the place were
nice enough to give us some petrol for free for our
cooker (we thought we had more than we did for our
tramp) and got to the end of the track with only
200mls! Oops!!! oh well, petrol worked well, and we
cooked quite a bit on the fires. our new billy now
looks old, is black and messy. it was enivitable that
we'd be cooking on fires with it sometime anyway.
as for today, we are going to try to hitch to punta
arenas to have a couple more nights with roberto.
have a gift to drop off to him, and want to catch up
on a few things.
it might take a few days to get to punta arenas and we
may have to take a bus yet if we can't get a ride.
we'll see. we want to take a different route to see
some different country (ie go through porvenier - on
tierra del fuego). its probably not on your map cause
its just a small wee town.
will send another update from the next major place we
get to.
nicola
[Ushuaia: pre-tramp]
Thursday, 22 April, 2004
Hi there
Just a quick email from Ushuaia. We arrived late last
night from punta arenas after a 12 hour bus ride on
gravel roads. a long way, and didn't see much cause
all the interesting scenery we passed in the dark.
The other 9 hours of the trip were all the same,
imagine travelling through lindis pass with tussock
hills (except take away almost all of the hills), and
thats what it looked like. very flat, lots of tussock
and absolutely nothing else. except I did see one
guanaco about 3 hours into the journey standing on the
side of the road. The only other thing I saw was a
bus the same as ours that had crashed and then been
burnt out lying on the side of the road. very
comforting..... NOT!
we are in argentina now. went across the border in
the bus yesterday (our first land based border
crossing). you go through the chilean officials first
and get stamped out of chile, then drive for half an
hour before getting stamped into argentina at the
artentine post. so for that half an hour you are
literally in 'no mans land'. we also had to change
buses at rio grande, and stopped at a wee food outlet
somewhere else but we have no idea where that was as
it doesn't appear to be on our map.
I was feeling a bit yuck when we arrived, so andrew
booked us into quite a nice hostel. its the flashest
place we've paid for to date. warm and they give you
breakfast for about $9nz dollars I think (but we're
not sure yet what the argentina exchange rate is). is
the NZ dollar dropping lots at the moment, cause we
have noticed our exchange rates are getting slightly
worse in chile.
getting up and looking out the window this morning we
see ushuaia which is right next to the beagle channel
and goes up the hills behind too. I think there is
about 40000 people here. its very pretty - quite like
nz and the peaks behind the town have snow on them.
we're going to spend the day looking around town.
there is a good museum here that we might spend a few
hours in (they have a good antarctic section too).
We are also hoping to get in 4-6 days tramping
somewhere around here if we can make up our minds
where to go. I think I am really going to love it
here. quite touristy, and very expensive for
argentina because of where it is, and the fact that
basically everyone who comes here is a tourist, but
its worth it. this is as far south as our entire trip
will take us, so for the next few months at least, its
going to get warmer (excluding our brief detours up
peaks along the way).
Right, had better fly. Lots to see and its 9am
already!
nicola
Back Next
