It´s the end of the world and we made it

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  Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina
Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Cheesy I know, but you can´t come here and not sing REM songs. We´re in Ushuaia which is the most southerly city (well largish town) in the world and it´s very proud of it´s end of the world status. We travelled 36 hours on a bus to get here and it definitely felt like the end of everything when we arrived, and when you look out over the Beagle Channel you see the what appears to be more land, but is in fact one of the group of islands that include Cabo de Hornos (Cape Horn). So I suppose this is it - only 1,000 K´s more to Antartica - a three week cruise for 3 grand to get there and a 2 week trip for 2 grand to Cape Horn ain´t gonna happen unfortunately.

Anyway, I´m getting ahead of myself. We´ve been travelling for nearly two weeks and it feels so much longer, which I think is a good thing. And this is the first time I´ve had an opportunity to sit down and recount our tales so far. If you´re bored by this point, we´re having a fab time and Argentina is just wonderful, huge, enormous and a bit bonkers but wonderful. If you want to know more, keep reading ...

So, we left, arrived in Barcelona as the first stop of our trip. Charged through the airport feeling a bit shellshocked about what we were embarking on (and perhaps a little smug) and proceeded through various doors to get to baggage reclaim. So we´ve only been on foreign soil for 5 minutes and our first cock-up. To give us our dues, Ben had only had 2 hours sleep and I´d been up since 5am and was feeling a little giddy about the whole thing. We were having the usual argument about Ben´s inability to get of a plane in less than 3 hours and this continued through passport control, a loo stop and down to the luggage carousels. A quick squizz at the monitor showed our flights baggage had yet to materialise so we sat down and marvelled at the fact that we can just sit on our backsides for the next 9 months if we so desire. Fifteen minutes later and still no sign of the baggage from Heathrow ... and having said that no Iberia flights at all ... we smelt a rat.

With our shocking Spanish we managed to deduce that the Iberia luggage goes to a different reclaim area despite the fact that our gate was right next to this reclaim and there were no signs telling you otherwise. Marvellous. The solution? We have to go through customs without our bags, run to Terminal B, have increasingly alarmed conversations with various Iberia staff with much shrugging, shaking of heads and tutting, until we establish it is not our long since discarded boarding passes that we require to get back ´flight side´ and hunt down our precious rucksacks, but that strange sticker they always annoying attach to your passports when you fly and I´d never know the purpose of (I do now). This established, and much love bestowed on the single non-shrugging Iberia girl, we race to go through departure security - blag our way with crap Spanish past the boarding pass checker informing him that we didn´t need our boarding passes and then completely confusing the bag searchers with the fact that I had an empty water bottle in my bag and that I´m not getting onto any plane so it really doesn´t matter and yes I do want to keep it and then race through departures into arrivals to "Bagages Empejar B" we finally find our homes for the next 9 months languishing on a static reclaim belt. Oh the relief. Although what the says for what is to come who knows ...

Anyway, if I carry on with this much detail I´ll spend the entire 9 months writing blogs and not actually doing anything. We spent two days in Barcelona and Ben promised to show me all the sights as he´s been there a couple of times before. I should have realised that ´sights´ were stag-do sights and as such consisted of bars and clubs and little else. So we went to see some Gaudi the cathedral - Sagrada Familia, (which is amazing and will be awesome when it´s finished in 2020 - only taken nearly 100 years to complete!) and Park Güell which is rather strange and difficult to describe. The latter is where we had a bizarre picnic for Ben´s birthday which he didn´t particularly enjoy as later that night we got on our plane to Buenos Aires for the start proper of our adventure, and 12 hours later landed in the Argentinian Capital.

I´d heard nothing but good things about BA - apparently it´s unlike any other South American city and it certainly felt very European. We went for broke and initiated ourselves in what will no doubt be the first of many stays in youth hostels. We were staying on the unpronouncable Hipolito Yrigoyen which was right in ´downtown´ and as the travel brochures say, ideally located. It was a hostel in a beautiful old building with one of those old fashioned lifts that you don´t entirely trust and some interesting characters. The first night we had our own room but then for the subsequent nights we moved into a dorm room. Oh my god, a bit of a shock to the system it was fine, although we were rooming with the charming Italian Domingo and his "trombone". Unfortunately Domingo wasn´t a gifted musician who entertained us with his repertoire more a loud and persistent snorer ...

Porteños, as those who live in BA are called, are a very cosmopolitain and image conscious bunch. Apparently 30% of Porteños have a shrink and 1 in 10 young girls is anorexic. This goes someway to explaining how underdressed I felt in my oh so practical travellers gear and how I´ve been mourning my hair (which I stupidly had cut off before we left) ever since. That said, it didn´t seem pretentious although that might be because we couldn´t understand what anyone was saying to us!

BA is a proper buzzing city, with all the usual good and bad things. The traffic was phenomenal - eight lanes in each direction and some hairy driving that nobody bats an eyelid at. We spent a lot of time in the Puerto Madero area which is on the waterfront and seems to be a cross between Butler´s Wharf in London and Sydney Harbour. Basically old port buildings transformed into trendy restaurants with sky scraping office buildings behind. Down there we had a very long lunch with stunning Bife de Chorizo (huge massive sirloin steak to die for) and copious Malbec - all good but probably not within budget! Ben wanted to spend his whole time here, but I managed to drag him to the area called La Boca (home of the Boca Juniors) to see the famously painted homes and visit the CABJ stadium. We were both gutted because the week before we arrived the Argentinian authorities decided to ban anyone other than home members and season ticket holders from attending any football match. This was due to the high levels of violence between opposing teams and was done in an effort to curb it. As such one of the things we were most excited about doing came to nothing (having said that even if the ban hadn´t been in place we´d have missed Boca as they were playing away that weekend!!). Since then we´ve met a few people who managed to go the weekend before and see matches before the ban came into place. Frustrating but we had a look around the stadium and couldn´t get over how tiny it was. We reminisced a little about Highbury as the Boca stadium is surrounded by houses and so no room for expansion. We also couldn´t believe that stadiums still have 12 foot high perspex surrounding the pitch - particularly given Hillsborough and Heisel.

Before La Boca we´d been to the San Telmo district which is where all the rich used to live in the 19th century before there was a Yellow Fever epidemic and they all hightailed it out of there. It´s the most atmospheric part of BA as it has all the old architecture. We went on Sunday when the flea market was on and it was a gorgeously hot day and we sat and had a beer and watched the (very busy) world go by. There was a flea market and heaps and heaps of antique shops - we are so going back there to kit out our house one day! There were also various people tango-ing in the street and lots of music and generally it was wonderful!

That evening we had a tango lesson in our hostel - looks easy - it´s not. Ben was full of enthusiasm, but as the Ozzie girl who had to be his partner for a while exclaimed loudly Ben dances "like a robot". After embarrassing ourselves by being so bad for 2 hours our instructors gave an impromptu performance that was just amazing. Everything you imagine Tango to be, sexy, intimate, passionate and dramatic. So we were really excited about the professional show we were going to see later that night. We went to a typical tango performance and were disappointed as it was more of a naff cabaret show with technically very good dancers but not one ounce of emotion or drama. Shame but at least we´d seen what it should be like.

The following day was my mission. My grandpa (Boppa) lived in Buenos Aires in the early 1930´s for a couple of years working for the then Price Waterhouse. Whilst here he played rugby for the then named Pacific Railway rugby team and may well have received a cap for Argentina against Uruguay whilst here, we think. So the mission was to find the club and see if they had any photos or information about the team at that time. Having done a bit of research I´d established that the team was now called San Martín. I´d tried to find an address but to no avail, so we thought we´d just go to the San Martín district of BA and see if we could find it. Off we went on a rickety old train and as the dust cleared over San Martín our hopes dwindled a little. We started asking people if they knew where the estadion de rugby de San Martín was. They looked at us rather strangely so Ben started acting out a rugby pass. From his attempts you can tell he´s never thrown a rugby ball! This proceeded to confuse things further. We carried on asking all the people we could find and the same response throughout. Some people had heard of the San Martín hockey club, but when we asked if they could direct us there they knew it was a long way away but had no idea where. There also weren´t any taxis. So after a lot of walking and scratching of heads, we decided to call it a good try (if you´ll excuse the pun) and head back to town. It was a shame as I had visions of seeing more photos of my lovely Boppa, but with hindsight starting with PwC might have been a better bet. So no news to report on that and no San Martín Rubgy shirt for my bro. Although given the complete indifference towards rugby that we encountered I think the chances of them having shirts for sale is slim to none!

Having loved BA not least for it´s fabulous steak and wonderful atmosphere, we decided it was time to leave and see more of Argentina so we boarded a bus that night for the 17 hour journey to Puerto Madryn on the Atlantic coast. The bus was amazing (sad the things that become exciting) - like business class on a plane and all meals included. Probably not a good thing that we started like this as I know the buses in Bolivia and Ecuador won´t be quite the same.

Puerto Madryn is called a city but like most places here is a little town - not much bigger than Oundle (although 70,000 people live there I´ve no idea where they all are.) It´s basically an Argentine holiday resort and for us Gringos is the jumping off point for the Peninsula Valdes. The Peninsula is a wildlife sanctuary and a breeding ground for the endangered Southern Right Whale. Basically we were going whale watching.

We arrived there about midday and having had the morning looking out of the window of the bus at endless mile upon mile of pampas I can understand why Gringos go to all the same places in Argentina. As there is absolutely nothing in between them. It´s quite liberating to see that amount of nothing and you can stare at it for hours. It definitely makes you realise how overcrowded England is and how tiny. I´ve two questions I need answering though - where are all the trees? (None at all) and who on earth put up all the hundreds of miles of fencing that distinguishes one enormous estancia (ranch) from another??

Once arrived, we found ourselves somewhere to stay, booked ourselves on a trip to the whales for the next day, found a laundry and then headed to the beach. Too darn windy for anything other than a brisk walk to the Eco Centre. One of the best museums I´ve ever been to that bascially told you all about whales, seals, sea lions and penguins and was interesting and had stunning views out over the ocean and a whale skeleton. Hard

Next day we boarded a minibus with the same faces that had made the trip from BA and headed out to the peninsula to get on a boat to go and get us a snap of a whale. Given our track record with seeing large mammals (i.e. lack of lions and so on on honeymoon) we weren´t holding out much hope, but within a few minutes there was a mother and her calf alongside the boat. It was stunning to see them and I couldn´t get over how enormous they are - a female grows up to 18 metres long and 50 tonnes. The boat was quite small and the sea was really choppy and much to Ben´s amusement by the end of the trip I was more than a little green around the gills.´ I don´t know what it is that makes whale-watching so appealing because you don´t see much more than a blow-hole and a tail, but I think it´s something to do with getting close to mammals that have the secrets of the sea in them and that they are such wonderfully placid creatures. It´s also amazing that something so big can survive by eating the smallest creatures in the sea ...

From there we went to look at seals (do nothing at all) and penguins (boring on land, great in the water) and headed back to town. I can safely say that neither Ben or I are huge sealife enthusiasts but it´s so ace to be doing these things and the coastline was dramatically beautiful.

Puerto Madryn doesn´t have much to offer other than access to the peninsula so we decided to get out of town, knowing that there are other places in Argentina that we will want to spend more time in. Next stop Rio Gallegos on route to Ushuaia.

We couldn´t get an overnight bus to Rio Gallegos because the connection to Ushuaia was at 8am. This meant leaving P. Madryn at 10 am and getting into Rio Gallegos at 4am the next day. Another mammoth bus journey the highlight of which was when the bus drivers forgot one of the passengers after we stopped for some food. They realised their omission (good of them), tried to turn around, got stuck in a ditch, had to be pulled out by a passing lorry (not very common in those parts), drive for another 20 minutes to find a better place to turn around, go back, pick him up - he hadn´t even noticed as he´d been happily supping vino tinto with the cafe owner - and then go back again. All the Argentinans found this whole thing hilarious. Ben and I, in true British fashion, were suitably unimpressed! However, due to the wine-drinker we arrived in Rio Gallegos at 6am rather than 4 -not such a bad thing - less time to kill. Particularly given RG is nowhere you´d want to be for longer than you had to - despite Lonely Planet´s assertions to the contrary.

Knowing that there would be limited tickets available onto Ushuaia as there is only one bus a day that does the trip, the only Brits in the place (i.e. Ben and I and another girl) formed an orderly queue in front of the unopen ticket office and patiently waited for it to happen. Oh and for once it paid off. There were only 4 tickets left, a very long queue and no other bus until tomorrow. We got the tickets (and felt like something out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as Ben said) and so did the other Brit girl and French girl we´d befriended - Oh the guilt if they hadn´t go them too - and got on a bus for the 12 hour journey to the end of the world.

This was no ordinary bus journey. Not only did we get to cross the Straits of Magallen (very exciting), cross from Argentina into Chile and then 4 hours later back again (exciting stamps in passport prevail), see the landscape change from treeless, desolate, windswept pampas (with ubiquitos fences) to stunning lakes and snowcapped mountains, travel 6 hours on unsealed roads, we also had the company of 3 young Israelis and their amusement thanks to the dodgy US Movie "Euro Trip" (yes these buses show films!). All their efforts to chat up the two scandinavian girls on the bus near them with their traveller-cool, were completely negated by their knowing all the words to said dodgy film and their hysterical laughter at all the knob gags! Their presence and general good spirits made for light entertainment for the rest of us.

So now we´re at the end of the world and it´s quite bizarre. The nearest other town is three hours drive away yet it´s bizarrely full of tourists. As said it´s a jumping off point for trips to Antarctica and there is a lot of walking and trekking to be done in the beautiful Tierra del Fuego national park which we went to yesterday, the Marital Glacier, which we climbed up to the day before and the moutain ranges behind the ´city´which we´re going to tomorrow. It´s blummin´cold down here and the name Tierra del Feugo seems a bit of an anomaly. However, the name (which means land of fire) comes from when 16th centruy explorer Magellan, sailed round Cape Horn they saw loads and loads of fires which were lit by the indigenous people to scare off the explorers. Sadly the strategy didn´t work and the last of the Yahgan who originally lived here died over a hundred years ago thanks to being killed by the explorers or contracting the diseases they brought with them.

The walking is beautiful and I think it´s fulfilling lots of the reasons we wanted to do this trip. Without sound like a tree hugger, there´s a lot of fulfillment and joy to be had from climbing a mountain, sitting on a glacier and looking over the end of the world. We´re here until Saturday as we can´t bring our flight forward any, but it will give us time to just enjoy being somewhere as far away from home as we can possibly be. This afternoon we´re heading out on a boat on the Beagle Channel along which Ushuaia is siuated and which leads untimately to Cape Horn, although we can´t find anyone to take us the full distance.

Once we leave here, we fly to Punto Arenas in Chile (not far away) and head to Torres del Paine national park, supposedly the National Park of South America. More news then. By which point I´ll have figured out how to upload photos to this thing as well.

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