The fairest tourist trap of all

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  Ushuaia, Patagonia, Argentina
Friday, November 28, 2008

The truly terrible Bonnie Tyler B-side that´s being played in this cyber cafe is making composition a little difficult. One of the best/worst aspects of foreign travel is the opportunity to hear singles that didn´t make it stateside. Ever hear Madonna´s "The Gambler"? Yeah, me neither.
Get on with it already, honestly. Today is Thanksgiving, and we´re in Ushuaia, the city "at the end of the world" (you´re constantly reminded, trust me.) Like a few other cities we´ve visited, people actually live and work in Ushuaia alongside a nearly non-stop tourist onslaught that supplies the city with most of its money and headaches. Luckily for the year-long residents, most of these typically touristy activities are relegated to a ghetto of duty-free shops, high priced restaurants, and an endless array of travel agents. Lucky for us, Ushuaia is deservedly popular, with one of the most beautiful settings of any place we´ve been. I know you´ve heard alot about breathtaking this and incredible that, but Ushuaia´s definitely in it´s own class. A plethora of majestic peaks loom over the city, which is situated on the beagle channel, by the way. I could point at any of these craggy mountains and tell you "The elven king lives there. He rules over his icy dominion with an iron fist" and you´d say, "yeah, of course he does. That´s where he hangs out." Don´t be suprised if they film the next Narnia movie here.
Speaking of the Beagle Channel, we took a typically touristy boat ride on an ancient river boat down there a couple days ago. It wasn´t such a big deal, you know, getting nose to nose with a couple of sea lions, straddling the only natural link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, photographing cormorant colonies and glaciers, all in a day´s work for your average Ushuaia visitor. It took us three days to pay for it, but it was worth it.
So how´s the weather down here? Not as cold as you might think, actually, but quite cold enough for us. The winds here are only gale force as oppossed to the "fierce" and "unrelenting" winds we´re due to experience in Torres del Paine (our next stop), but again, quite windy enough for me. Less than a month to the Antarctic summer solstice (December 21) means that a day here lasts about 18 hours. It´s 10:30pm now and just beginning to get dark. Great for camping and hiking, but difficult for maintaining a decent sleep schedule.
Ushuaia has helped us to get acquainted with Argentina´s bizaare sense of patriotism and territory. I don´t mean to politicize this blog, or cause any undue controversy, but as far as I was concerned, no country has claims on Antarctica, right? I mean, it´s a pristine iceworld at the bottom of the earth, I thought we had all agreed that it would belong to everyone or noone. Argentina, however, goes to great lengths to help you understand that they do, in fact, have a stake in Antarctica, and picture a sliver of it on any maps of the region. I´m not even going to stick my big toe in the Falkland islands issue (go look it up and learn something). During our visit to Tierra del Fuego National Park, we noticed every tiny island had an Argentinian flag planted in it, to prevent confusion with Chilean territory. We even hiked to the Argentinian/Chilean border and jumped around on it a bit (highly illegal, I´m sure everyone does it.) I can attest that it was more exciting than the Carolina border in Carowinds (what is that place called nowadays? can anyone help me out?)
No need to listen to me jabber about it. Check these out for yourself better than the local postcards
We´re pulling one of our exciting South American all-nighters tonight. These entail buying tickets for a bus that leaves at a ridiculous hour, realizing that we can´t take our tent (yes, we´ve been camping the whole time) down in the dark at 3:30 in the morning, and subsequently spending the evening sitting on a picnic table or in an internet cafe with our bags all packed and ready to go. So maybe this one will be two parter. We´ll see.

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