Ushuaia, Argentina

Thursday, March 10, 2005:

The Grand Splendor of Nature; the Majesty of the untamed Wild. Who needs it? I thought I would see what all the fuss is about by trekking up the side of the mountain overlooking Ushuaia and the Beagle Channel, perhaps catching a glimpse of another glacier along the way.

I woke up earlier than I ordinarily would --- at 9 AM --- because our hotel had no vacancy for the next night. It was gray, cloudy and raining outside and I could hear the wind howling continuously down the street, blowing cold drafts of air through my window. After packing everything up and scrambling downstairs, however, the attendant at the desk told me that there was one available room, so I ran back up and took it. Chris happily moved down the street to a new place, more luxurious and twice as expensive, because he has money to burn and the British pound is so strong against the dollar and Argentinian peso. "If the pound were still at 1.4 to the dollar, I´d be poor right now," he explained (the rate is now approximately 1.91 to the dollar). "Right, and I´d be in London right now," I told him. We had a late breakfast and split up. He was set to take a trip down the Beagle Channel to a penguin sanctuary that afternoon. I was all penguined out and ready for a little exercise. I ran some errands and walked around Ushuaia a little in the drizzle and gloom. I then headed back to the hotel to change into multiple layers of clothing (about 5 of them, truthfully).

On my way out toward the bus terminal, I ran into Sandro, a Swiss-German computer-programmer I had met way back in the Galapagos, then again in various places along the way south (such as Cuenca, Ecuador and La Paz, Bolivia). Ever since the Galapagos, Sandro had been talking about how badly he wanted to head down to Ushuaia in order to book a last-minute --- and hopefully discounted --- cruise to Antarctica aboard one of the immense ex-Soviet ice-breakers that now offer these voyages during the warmer (for Antarctica) summer months of the year. As it turned out, he had finally succeeded in doing just that and had returned from his 10-day trip only an hour earlier. I quizzed him on the details, asking him "so what did you see?" His first response: "Russian girls!" Apparently Sandro spent as much time appreciating the staff of the ice-breaker as he did Antarctica. "I saw lots of ice too," he finally offered... "it reminds me of the Russian girls."

I headed off to look into transportation to the foot of Mt. Martial, a couple of miles north of the city. From there a ski-lift would carry me up the first half of the way and I could hike for several hours toward the glacier or on other paths overlooking Ushuaia, the Channel and the surrounding mountain range. A man in a battered white mini-van waved to me as I reached a corner marked by a sign that read "Bus Terminal." I told him where I wanted to go and he quoted me a rate of $3 for roundtrip fare. Not bad. I asked if he could sell me tickets and he told me I should head down to the office at the end of the block. I went to the end of the block and there were no offices. I asked a woman in an internet cafe where tickets were purchased and she pointed me back in the direction of the corner with the mini-van. At the corner, another driver of a different mini-van saw my confusion and pointed me in an entirely different direction to purchase tickets. As I stumbled away, the original driver who sent me off the first time around came up to me and told me he could sell me a ticket. I mention all of this for no particular reason other than to stress that this experience for me is entirely symptomatic of South America (which I love, don`t get me wrong). I still have doubts as to whether there is any ticket terminal down at the bus station. If I lived in a bucolic little city of 50,000 set in the heart of a vast, stormy and untamed region named the "Land of Fire," described as "The End of the World" and the "Uttermost Part of the Earth" and as remote and isolated from the rest of humanity as can be, I admit that I might also find it amusing to play a little game with my buddies called "Torment the Gringo" and send hordes of baffled tourists off in 15 different directions in search of places that do not exist. Or maybe I just wouldn´t care enough to give proper instructions to a ticket office. I really don´t know.

The only other passenger heading for the mountain was a woman from Holland who was "killing time" that day before departing in the morning on a three-week yacht trip through the Beagle Channel and the Fuegian Archipelego in the Chilean portion of Tierra del Fuego. We drove on winding roads leading up the hillside out of the center of the city and passing signs for several ski resorts on the way. Although most of its tourism comes during the summer months, the city is beginning to attract a share of winter visitors as well, offering a growing number of ski and snowboarding options. Some 2,000 miles south of Buenos Aires (which is at approximately the same latitude as Sydney, Australia) Ushuaia may not be the most convenient destination for a winter holiday, but, then again, its not very convenient for anything at any other time of the year either, trips to Antarctica notwithstanding.

After 15 minutes, we came to a series of wooden and brick lodges at the foot of an old, rusty-looking ski-lift. "5:00 sharp," said the driver --- "you must be back here at 5:00 sharp." I went into the lodge, purchased my ticket and climbed aboard the lift, riding up over forest, slopes of shale and icy-looking streams flowing down from the snow at the top of the mountain. When the wind blew --- which was pretty much the entire duration of the ride --- the lift car swayed back and forth and made un-encouraging creaking noises. I sat still and kept my gaze fixed on the view ahead of me --- pine forests stretching up toward an immense bed of snow and glacial ice commencing at halfway up the steep side of Mt. Martial. Ten minutes later I disembarked and found myself looking back at an incredible view of Ushuaia and the Beagle Channel. Snow was falling steadily and nearly horizontally, propelled by the wind, and I could see rain coming down in the distance over the city. Aside from the Dutch woman and the man running the ski-lift, there was nobody in sight. A lonely-looking lodge stood to the side of the lift, a sign nearby advertising hot chocolate. Another sign pointed me further on up the slope and so I dutifully headed north.

I won`t bother to go into the hike up in too much detail. The first few minutes took me up along the side of a rocky stream and through a forest of pine trees. The wind whistled and the snow continued to fall. I then found myself on a wide open stretch of tall grassy plains which were damp and rather muddy from the constant snow and melting glacier water. In the distant gloom I could make out three or four other hikers in colorful blue or red jackets, perhaps a mile or more ahead of me. The mountains rose sharply above me on both sides and directly ahead, where immense banks of snow and blueish ice blanketed slopes of black rock. After twenty minutes of hiking across the plain, climbing gradually upward as I went (and stopping at several points to appreciate ever more impressive views over Ushuaia and the channel, despite increasing clouds and snowfall), I reached a series of steep hills, which did not seem to feature any proper trail or path. I scrambled up slopes of loose shale, pebbles and dirt, slid as I encountered increasingly muddy ground and tried to use patches of spongy damp green moss for better footing when I could. I was wearing sneakers without much traction, but managed to find a route up to a more gradual bed of rock and shale after another fifteen or twenty minutes. I was now reaching the final leg before the glacier and was directly beneath the steep, ice-capped face of Mt. Martial. After ten more minutes I could see part of the glacier above me. However, at this point I realized that I would need to climb an exceptionally sharp bank of snow and ice to get to it. While I did not doubt that I could make this climb, I did doubt my ability to get back down again in less than three pieces. I saw several better equipped climbers ahead of me having a difficult time descending. Moreover, the snowfall had picked up. Memories of various Jack London short stories sprang to mind. Having seen the Perito Moreno Glacier in El Calafate and having caught a glimpse of the Martial Glacier ahead of me, I resigned myself to realize a limit and suffice myself with hiking back down along a different (hopefully equally scenic) route. The first impulse was probably smart. In hindsight, the second probably wasn`t.

Because of my sneakers, I didn`t want to descend on the same loose dirt and shale "trail" I had ascended by. I resolved to look for patches of grass and moss along with slopes of larger rocks and stones. I followed a series of streams for a while, congratulating myself on the relative ease this route was providing me with. I even snapped into a Slim Jim (furnished courtesy of Sena and Jon, whose visit from New York the week before still requires a back-entry) at the End of the World to celebrate my arrival there. My self-congratulatory mood continued for another ten minutes until I found myself in a small valley of rock and shale, standing at the top of a virtually sheer ten-foot drop (followed by a stream) to the rock below. I tried to find a way down along the sides but didn`t see any. I was forced to jump over the stream, climb up the side of the valley and move horizontally across the hill while searching for alternative routes, which I found, though they were hairy and involved a jump or two onto patches of moss below. This made me uneasy. I was out of the view of the few other hikers on the mountain and, while the terrain was hardly "difficult" as one would use the word relative to hiking, I was alone without anybody to help me if I fell and broke a leg or twisted an ankle. More Jack London memories sprang to mind. I was beginning to regret reading Jack London. Still, as much as I found the climb down to be harrowing, I was also starving. "If you get through this," I told myself, "you can stuff your face when you get down." This worked wonders, as it usually does, and after one final jump from a steep side of rocks to the moss some four feet below, I was back on the plains and clear of obstacles for the rest of the hike back to the ski-lift. I sat in the lodge at the bottom and had a hot chocolate while waiting for the mini-van driver, who was twenty-five minutes late ("5:00 sharp"). "Hola! Amigo!" he said. "Mrrghmm," I replied. The Dutch woman was nowhere to be seen (and hopefully wasn`t lying somewhere at the top of the mountain with a twisted ankle) so I rode down with the driver and a very very talkative French couple who tried to practice their nearly non-extant Spanish with the driver. Oui. It was torture.

After changing clothes back in town, I went to a cafe and read while having two sandwiches and a bunch of chocolate (they sold about 60 different varieties there). I then met Chris for dinner where I felt obligated to have an enormous plate of king crab in garlic sauce. Passing crowds of people on the streets on our way to a bar afterwards, we noticed the same thing: the city was inundated with hordes of (1) French tourists and (2) Russian girls in 1980s platform shoes. Truly the End of the World.