Marcelo and Manolo came to pick us up at nine, and we drove to the national park surrounding Ushuaia.

It was a nice, gentle nature walk, with Marcelo telling us about the peat bogs: 10.000 years of layers of moss are accumulated in the national park, and it is not used as fuel because it's too far to transport it. He told us how beavers were introduced because they were hunted for their skin to make coats, but now they wreak havoc on the forest, as they only eat barks off trees and cut the trees to build dams, so they can make a lagoon which is their house.

He also told us about Indian bread, a kind of fungus that grows on the trees, and the trees need to bypass the growth in order not to die so they develop something that looks like a tumor. There are wild orchids in the forest, yellow and white, and they prefer the old trees as they provide better soil.

We had a great lunch (I guess I thought it was great because we got mayonaise with our salad...) and afterwards, we went to the southernmost post office of the world, where 'crazy postman Carlos' (who had a huge moustache and looked suitably picturesque) puts a huge stamp in your passport to prove you've been there for three pesos.

Marcelo also claimed that place had the world's cleanest toilet, so obviously I had to inspect, and it was, as toilet cubicles go, squeaky clean. To flush, you needed to pull on this stickshift thing to suck water up through a hose, and then it released it into the toilet. Ingenious!

We then climbed onto the bus to go to another 'southernmost tip', namely the end of the Panamerican Highway, which runs all the way down from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego (although there is some discussion as to whether it really end a bit earlier). There was a great view of the end of the world, looking out over the lakes and channels, but it loses a bit of its significance when you are there with a whole bunch of chattering English people.

I had a discussion with Marcelo about soup and soap, which to him sounded identical, and jabon and jamon. It's funny how in Argentina, the ll is pronounced as zj, for instance pollo is pojo in Cuba, but pozjo in Argentina. Very confusing.

When we got back to the hotel, Kirsty made the comment:
'Well, that was a boring day'
which I thought was a bit unfair. It wasn't maybe as spectacular, but I really enjoyed it.

In the evening we had lunch in Bar Ideal, where we played the 'interesting facts' game. Everybody had had to write down one 'interesting fact', and then everybody had to guess who the person was. There were a lot of school plays, some sports facts, meeting famous people and a few TV appearances. Duncan did not get any right, which was quite telling I would say... I got 6 out of 17, top score was 8.

Afterwards, we had a drink in one of two Irish pubs (why on earth does Ushuaia feel the need to have TWO Irish pubs? In any case, there wasn't much Irish about it) and Mike was telling me about his travels in Africa... My list of places to visit is getting longer again...