Ushuaia - The End of the World

"El Fin Del Mundo" - The End of The World

South America is really a huge place. Really. We traveled from one town on the very southern tip of the continent to another town, and it took almost 12 hours on a bus to get there! Most of what we saw while on the bus from Punta Arenas to Ushuaia was vast, empty space, filled with sparse trees and shrubs and wide open grasslands with guanacos, foxes, and rheas. We did cross the border from Chile to Argentina, which would have been a lot easier if someone would have told us to keep our receipt from Chilean immigration. We threw this little piece of paper away after we arrived, and when crossing the border our bus driver said “if you don’t have this, you have to turn around now and go back to Punta Arenas.” Needless to say we freaked out a little bit, but the immigration officer was really nice and let us go anyway. If you do lose this paper, they are easy to replace in town, but needed at any border crossing, so the immigration office knows you are only a tourist and not staying longer than three months.

Additionally, we took a ferry, as Tierra Del Fuego is actually a huge island. The wind on the ferry is biting cold, but it’s worth it to be up on the deck to watch for dolphins. We saw tons of small, black and white dolphins jumping through the channel as we crossed. Commerson’s dolphins, as they are called, are only found in this part of the world, and are on the endangered species list. 

Finally, after a very long bus ride, we arrived in Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world. The city’s slogan is “El Fin del Mundo” which fittingly translates to the end of the world. We had arranged for our airbnb host to pick us up from the bus station when we were scheduled to arrive, but we got there about an hour early. So we walked a short ways into town and found a lovely restaurant called Tanta Sara and found a couple seats at the bar. A glass of wine and a chef’s salad were reasonably priced and was just what we needed after a long day of travel. We were feeling good about life as we headed back to the bus station to meet our host. He pulled up shortly, in a very small car. As we started driving, we realized just how far outside of the city center he lived. It looked like a short distance on the map, but was actually very far. When we got to his house, it was much like his car - small and dirty. He lived on a dirt road on the far edge of town up against a hill. We saw plenty of unsavory characters on his street and heard them drag racing up and down the road for most of the night. A few crocodile tears were shed that night, we didn’t get much sleep, and the next day we moved to a different b&b closer to the city center. One that had a clean bed for us, and a decent toilet with soap in the bathroom. We took a very much needed shower and unpacked, and we at last felt comfortable. Finally, our luck was looking up!

While in Ushuaia, we went to a museum, got a couple cups of coffee and some batidos, or milkshakes, and spent some time just exploring the town. The town itself is made to look like a European ski village, and is a little on the touristy side, but overall we loved it. It was partially built by prisoners in the late 1800’s early 1900’s. In the 1800’s, before the Panama Canal was built, the Argentina government wanted to desperately control the straits of Magellan. So they opened a prison in Ushuaia for re-offenders and dangerous prisoners to build a settlement. A few escape attempts were made, but every single prisoner came back, begging to be readmitted, because the landscape around Ushuaia is too harsh to survive alone in.

We ate at two excellent restaurants while in Ushuaia. The first one was called Küar. We split some seafood paella and a bottle of Malbec from Latitude 33 in Argentina. The wine cost about ten US dollars, so we thought it would be a glass, but to our surprise they brought the whole bottle for that price! There are a handful of dinners that we have shared together that are some of the best memories we have as a couple, and this has definitely made the list!

The second dinner was at Paso Garibaldi, where we ordered lamb ravioli with an almond cream sauce and crab ravioli with a spinach cream sauce. Again, we split a bottle of wine :). Peter thought the lamb was better, Hannah thought the crab was, but both were delicious, as was the wine. 

One of the main attractions of Ushuaia was the nearby Tierra del Fuego National Park. One day we took an early bus to the park, and hiked the Coastal Trek, which was a pretty easy hike but took four hours to complete. After so much travel and sitting on planes and busses, it felt really good to get back into nature and do a little physical activity. We did a couple other small hikes while in the park before our bus picked us up at about 5pm. The park is full of mountain views and is a great location for wildlife viewing - we saw tons of birds!

There are some other activities that we decided not to do out of Ushuaia, including a boat tour to see a penguin colony. While this sounded fun to us, it was very expensive and ultimately not worth the money for us. Additionally, there are a lot of opportunities to visit Antartica from Ushuaia. Again, way too expensive for us. A five day Antarctic expedition would have cost us more than ten thousand dollars! Sigh, maybe someday. We found out that pretty much everything in this part of the world costs a lot of money. 

In Ushuaia we learned a lot about what we want out of this adventure we are on, and about what we don’t want. We learned that getting off the beaten path can be a good thing, or it can be a bad thing, it all depends on what your comfortable with and what your values are. We will continue to push our limits and learn more about what’s important to us as we continue traveling northwards!