USHUAIA!!!!!! WOOOOHOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!
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USHUAIA - It´s the Worlds Southernmost City!,
Argentina
Monday, March 6, 2006
6.5 Months of Traveling, loads of buses, hitching and random adventures and in the last 2 days, I have taken 5 Buses and over 2 days of travel but I have finally made it to Ushuaia;
!!! THE WORLDS SOUTHERNMOST CITY !!!
I even have the official stamps in the passport to prove it saying ´Ushuaia - Ciudad mas sur en el Mundo´ ´The Worlds Southernmost City´! Now I just have to get to Alaska overland and my trip will be complete! Ha!
It has taken me over 6 months of hitching, long buses and random adventures to get here! And wow, I have had some unreal experiences along the way!
After a few weeks of craziness here I´m heading slowly back to BA, then continuing North to Bolivia and Peru, then even further North to Central America!!
Patagonia has involved more hiking than anything else. I´m probably the fittest I have been in my life. The South of Argentina is called Patagonia, its full of glaciers and incredible awe inspiring mountain ranges and best of all LLAMAS!!!! Loads of LLAMAS!!! some are friendly enough to approach and I tell you, LLAMAS are the softest animals on the planet! I have a LLAMA beanie and LLAMA socks!! If you ever see anything made of LLAMA!! BUY IT!! I do!
Ushuaia is a cold, windy, party place and a very happening town! There are Emperor Penguins less than a kilometer from where I´m sitting, there are dolphins everywhere and sea lions and seals. The Harbor is full of massive reinforced cruise ships with ice breaking hulls that take tours to Antarctica for the small fee of $3000 US Dollars!!! HA! Yeah Right!!!!!
I decided to checkout Ushuaias glacier, called, M something, yeah ill get back to that, but it was a 4 hour climb through forest, rivers and eventually a scramble up a rock face to the top. I was told about a cave and found it with no trouble, scampering through a small entrance and being surrounded by ice with a brilliant blue glow. I polished some of the ice and was able to see right through. Meters of visibility, seeing small air pockets and rocks trapped in the dense ice. Its amazing to think that the air pockets can contain carbon dioxide exhaled by our previous inhabitants, even dinosaurs. Millions of years old! Hey maybe I will find a frozen Eskimo?
The next day I found the Aeroclub and was in heaven! I wandered around the hangar, chatting to pilots and expressing my interest in flight. Before I knew it i was in the air!! In a piper 1200, we were at around 1000 meters, climbing to 2000 when the pilot said, you fly and lifted his hands off the yoke and put them on his head. Awesome!!! I flew for 40 minutes, doing 60 degree turns and keeping a relatively level flight at 2000 feet with strong crosswinds hitting me. I was lucky enough to be in the air when a airbus took off from the international airport. We had to keep our distance but a few steep banked turns did the trick. Then it was a flyby past the famous lighthouse and we returned to the airport. I attempted to line up the runway and gave the controls back to the pilot who took us in for a bumpy, turbulent landing against strong headwinds.
As soon as I landed I wanted to go up again but gave in to temptations. What a buzz!!!
The last day in Ushuaia was spent with an Aussie chick from Sydney, a great German guy and an English lass. We celebrated the Germans birthday by baking him (or trying to bake him) a dulce de leeche cake, but ended up just drinking red wine and found ourselves late at night, in some kind of Irish pub called the Dublin. They give you free popcorn, and all i really remember is a continual request for more.
