It's the end of the world as we know it .......
Trip Start
Jul 02, 2003
1
32
33
Trip End
Jan 17, 2004
Ushuaia, Buenos Aires,
Argentina
Monday, January 12, 2004
From Punta Arenas I headed down to Ushuaia on a delightful 12 hour bus journey! Remind me not to do that in a hurry again. Anyway, Ushuaia is as good as the end of the world - there's a small place slightly further south in Chile but Ushuaia is the most southerly town of any size. Then of course there's Antartica and one of the depressing things about being in Ushuaia is listening to people telling you about what a wonderful time they've just had on their cruise to Antartica and wishing you had a spare US$ 2,500 and a couple of weeks.
Still Ushuaia is a fun town and we went off to see some more penguins and some of the scenery around the beagle channel - oh and a couple of very lazy looking sealions. This time we saw some Gentoo penguins as well as the Magallenic ones. Apparently you occasionally get to see King Penguins but there were none around the day we went. King penguins are the ones that look like the penguin on a penguin wrapper (a penguin is a chocolate biscuit for non UK readers)
Another day we went off to the National Park to check out the scenery there from the comfort of a little narrow guage steam train - all very pretty but not really a match for some of the scenery further north.
Ushuaia was a fun place to hang out for a few days though and much beer was drunk in the local irish pub. Then all too quickly it was time to head up to Buenos Aires for a bit more partying and a bit of Tango. On Saturday night we went to Cafe Tortoni to watch Jose and Luciana's Tango show - like stepping back in time. They danced, a guy sang, the old guys at the back played their hearts out on the accordian, piano, fiddle and double bass and everyone applauded wildly as it was a really good show. Then it was time to head out to the bars and check out some of Buenos Aires's famous nightlife finally getting back to the hostel around 7.30am!
And now today I caught a plane up to Iguazu. It took some time as the couple in front of me managed to take 30 minutes to check in - not sure how they managed it but it meant that my flight was closed so I had to go standby on the next one. The woman on the counter was clearly having a bad day as she decided that if I got on the flight I was going to have to pay for 9kg of excess baggage - because I wasn't connecting with an International flight my allowance was down to only 15kg. Nice touch!
That flight was full and eventually it was the 4th flight before I got on the plane although at least they forgot about the excess baggage. Then my tent went missing but it had been on the earlier flight so it turned up soon enough. I then checked into my hostel and set about finding a bus to Rio - they're all full till next Sunday (when I am meant to be back home) so I had to buy a flight - even that wasn't without complications and managed to take 4 hours including a trip over to Brazil, a long wait at immigration and a bus driver who couldn't be bothered to wait for us any longer at the border.
So now I'm hear and I have my ticket to Rio and tomorrow I'm off to see the falls at Iguazu - supposed to be one of the most spectacular sights on earth.
