Ushuaia

Trip Start Feb 10, 2006
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5
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Trip End Feb 01, 2007


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Flag of Argentina  ,
Thursday, February 23, 2006

Another long bus journey but this time during the day as we had to cross in and out of Chile on the way and catch a ferry across to the island of Tierra del Fuego - a wild, wind-whipped place if ever there was. It means "land of fire" as the original people here would wear little or no clothes and lit numerous fires to keep warm instead. Think Iīll stick to my nice wooly fleece.

The border crossings are fairly straight forward, just very time-consuming. The Argentinian border guards are very friendly and donīt intimidate you or try to extort money out of you (like they do in Cambodia). It can a bit of a pain getting all those stamps in your passport (as you have to go in to Chile then out again a few hours later) but at least they donīt waste a page by stamping it in the middle like they do at UK airports. It was interesting to see huge signs at every Argentinian border saying "Las Malvinas son Argentinas" which translates as "The Falkland Islands are Argentinian" - it appears that there is still a lot of strong feeling on this subject.

Ushuaia is gorgeous but very touristy, being "at the end of the world" and all that...funny how they ignore the Chilean town a few kilometres south. It was full of French sailors while we were there, all stocking up on postcards and duty free gifts. We found ourselves a lovely little camp site with a view over the town. Met a lot of travellers from all over the world, the most memorable being a bunch of Swedes who arrived in three big pink buses covered in elephants and proceeded to totally trash the camp site - toilets ripped off walls, fire extinguishers set off, the works. Glad we missed the worst of it as we headed off for the hills and a good long hike...should have read the small print first though!
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