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Ushuaia is the furthest south city in the world and also the port for vessels that are heading out to Antarctica. The city sits facing the Beagle Channel and is backed up a hill, surrounded by rugged snow -capped mountains and forests. It all sounds majestic and the scenery is stunning, however, the town itself is a shanty metropolis with run down houses, litter, stray dogs and a cars graveyard of rusting vehicles. The main street is full of tacky gift shops, restaurants and 'casinos' (slot machines) catering to the old wealthy cruise passengers. This is the starting point before they head out on their $5000 trip of a lifetime to stand on the ice in Antarctica for a very short while.
In 1870 the British-based South American Missionary Society first set eyes on the Yahgan, a nomadic tribe, whose members faced the brutal weather conditions completely naked. They believed the natural oil from their skin was better protection from the harsh winds and driving rain than wet clothing. We tried it one wet windy night, but felt it wasn't all it was cracked up to be!
We are staying in a hostel that is perched at the top of the hill leading down to town. Due to our late booking we are in a private room with a shared bathroom - with eight others! Apart from the odd wait to get in there and one disaster toilet blockage (not by us!) it's not been too much of an issue. The room is fine and big enough and has amazing views out to the mountains. Staff are friendly, which is a lot more than can be said for some of other the guests, however, we met a couple from Sweden and Spain who used to live in Widmore Road, a road that runs parallel from where we lived in Bromley. Such a small world! They are at the end of their trip which has taken them the opposite direction to us, so it was great to get some tips and to also hear that all other National Park's (with Ushuaia being the exception) are free with self guided walking trails.
As well as there being nothing pretty about the town, it's also expensive and everything has a price. To go walking in the Parque Nacional Tierra Del Fuego you need to pay to get transport to the park, then you have the entrance fee, on top of which the tourist offices in town tell you that you MUST only go to the park with the guide - oh and that's another x amount, all of which totals more than £100 just for a walk in a park (well, an amazing mountainous bevy of waterfalls, flora and fauna type of park) but still, a ridiculous amount of money. Instead, we head up to the starting point of a walk to see the Martial Glacier. It was a walk that went up.... and up .....and up...... One of us realised how unfit she is! After more than two hours of non-stop 'up' we evenutally made it through the clouds where the footpath turned into a steeper incline that finally led us over a patch of snow to find the elusive 'glacier' which to be fair did look like another patch of snow. It was only the word 'terminus' on a post that made us realise we were there. The actual definition of a glacier is: A huge mass of ice slowly flowing over a land mass, formed from compacted snow in an area where snow accumulation exceeds melting and sublimation. So who are we to argue! Luckily, just as we arrived, the thick cloud we had been walking through on the way up cleared to give us some amazing views over the Beagle Channel (named after HMS Beagle that Charles Darwin travelled on when he had his first glimpse of the area now known as Tierra Del Fuego). We wouldn't have witnessed the beautiful snowy caps against blue sky if we had been there 10 minutes earlier. The walk down was equally tiring especially as we realised the Crystal Palace game was about to kick off and we needed to get a wiggle on. The chair lift carried us down the last section.
Another free walk was to head out along the headland to a scenic spot and 4km along the coast. This gave us fantastic views of the Beagle Channel. Walking along the front, being exposed to the open water, the wind is so much colder and we had to wrap up against it. We took more photo's of mountains and got barked at by lots of stray dogs before we headed back. A local football game was on and the police presence for what looked like a Sunday league game was phenomenal. There were approximately 100 police hanging around in their high-viz jackets for a crowd of less than 50. Maybe just a little over the top?
However negative we may seem over the town itself, the scenery around is amazing and the people are so friendly.
In terms of evening entertainment the Parilla restaurants prove to be the biggest hit for food, as does the lively Dublin bar for a few local ales. This is the furthest south microbrewery (macrohangover!) in the world if we remember rightly - hic!
We met a Swede in this bar one evening, who is the Safety Officer on one of the Antartic Cruise ships. He told us the story of the demise of his predecessor in the Arctic. This guy and a colleague were out on the polar ice, when a bear suddenly appeared a short distance away and ran towards them. It pounced on the Safety Officer and started attacking him and tearing him apart limb by limb with his huge claws. His shocked colleague fired two pistol rounds in the back of the animal's head. This merely angered the creature who promptly rose up and knocked the colleague to the ground. He scrabbled away expecting the next fatal blow, but it never came. The bear was not interested in attacking him, but was concerned that this fellow was trying to steal his dinner! A lucky escape for this guy, but the Safety Office was no more. Following the inquest all excursions on to the ice are now made with rifles.
We shall also remember this bar for other reasons. A great friend Stephen Doran sadly passed away over two years ago while living in Abu Dhabi and his wife Sasha holds a commemoration golf day each year to commemorate his life. She had T-shirts made with his name on, and the golf day details, and asked us if we could leave a T-shirt somewhere along our travels. It is now pinned to the ceiling of this fab, lively Irish bar, the furthest south one in the world. There were cheers and tears for a very good friend.
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