El Calafate - Ushuaia, Argentina

Wednesday, March 9, 2005:

Ushuaia. This is the absolute end of the road. You cannot find a city south of where I am typing from because one does not exist. Sailing out of Ushuaia`s harbor and across the Beagle Channel for several miles one might stumble upon Chilean Port Williams, a naval settlement of approximately 2,500 people, but this is scraping the bottom of the barrel so far as attempting to define the absolute limit of the end of "civilization" before reaching Antarctica. Here, on the north side of the Channel, nestled under the expansive range of 5,000 foot glacier-capped Fuegan Andes, is the most southernly city in the world, a charming though tourist-oriented place with some 50,000 residents, filled with travel agencies, seafood restaurants, cozy chocolate and coffee shops and numerous sports and ski-wear outlets. Set upon a hill and overlooking a port filled with passenger ferries and several hulkingly massive freighters, most of the views down any given narrow street here will terminate at the base or summit of a snow-covered mountain --- either on the north side or across the dark blue, white-rippled waters of the Beagle.

Chris and I flew here from El Calafate at noon. The flight took approximately one hour and provided startling views of the vast, unpopulated plains of southern Patagonia. As we drew nearer to our final destination, the dry yellow land brightened to green and the coast of the Atlantic sprang into view. The landscape was obscured by miles of low, billuous white clouds during the final fifteen minutes of the flight. Only during the last few minutes did we dip below them to witness a wild range of forest, plains and mountains skewered through in the center by the turbulent, wind-swept waters of the Beagle Channel. The weather here is fiercely unpredictable, known to transform from utter calm to violent storms in a matter of seconds. As we landed at the airport on the shores of Ushuaia, just off the water, the sun was shining brightly through the holes in the clouds above, reflecting off of the distant mountain caps, and yet the wind suggested that everything could change rather suddenly. When we left the airport to find a taxi, we noticed that it was surprisingly warm: the mountains shield the city from much of the cold and it was (read with jealousy, New Yorkers) approximately 60 degrees. But when the wind blew it was hard to believe it wasn`t 30 degrees or less.

We had to hike around a little to find a hotel that had accomodation. We found a place on the main street that had vacancies but only for the night. We would have to move in the morning. We then began to explore the streets, looking for travel agencies to see what our options for excursions were. Chris wanted to visit an island colony of Magellenic Penguins further on down the Beagle Channel. While this didn`t sound bad to me, I`ve seen quite a few penguins already in the Galapagos and in Peninsula Valdes near Puerto Madryn in Northern Patagonia. I was more interested in exploring Argentina`s Tierra del Fuego National Park (the main draw down here), including a visit to the Martial Glacier, which is quite small compared to Perito Moreno near El Calafate, but set close to the top of a mountain overlooking Ushuaia, the Beagle Channel and the wilderness for miles around. After some brisk footwork, Chris found several companies for his bird viewing and I discovered that the best way to see the park was to hop a bus there and walk around by myself without any tour, as I could easily catch a bus back to town every half hour until 8 PM or so.

We caught a late lunch (king crab soup being the highlight) and reflected on just where on earth we actually were. Everything we were doing we were doing in the most southernly spot you could do it in and most of the attractions and things we were seeing were the southernmost specimens of their kind. For instance, an Irish Pub we passed was, in all probability, the "Southernmost Irish Pub on Earth," prompting Irish Chris to proclaim he would need to down a pint of the "Southernmost Guinness on Earth." I decided I would have to find a cafe later on to indulge in the "World`s Most Southernly Consumption of Too Much Coffee" and the "World`s Most Southernly Reading About Joseph Stalin." We then began to wonder what few things in the world were still possibly south of us, but quickly decided that whatever there was couldn`t be very important. "In point of fact, if its important," I said, "its North of here." Note that the author of the blog considers himself a remarkable exception to this rule.

After lunch Chris went to investigate more Penguin-related tours. I did some necessary blogging, then began to engage in my most-southern cup of coffee and JV Stalin-reading ever.