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We left Buenos Aires on Saturday morning without any hassle, managing to have a good chat with our taxi driver on the way to the airport - all in Spanish! The flight itself was about 4 hrs and fairly uneventful, aside from the plane being overpopulated with a very large group of obnoxious Frenchmen (what looked to be a French rugby team. Side note: we watched "Alive" the other week in BA. eek!). With all of them carrying on like school girls, needless to say we were both happy when we touched down in Ushuaia and were able to leave the confines of our plane. With our arrival in Ushuaia, begins a very different stage of our trip. We have essentially spent the past two months travelling in big cities, and finally, starting with Ushuaia, we will be settling in to a month of travel in Patagonia, one of the least densely populated expanses of land in the world. For those of you unfamiliar with the significance of Ushuaia, it is most famous for being the southernmost town in the world. Nestled at the base of a mountain chain - effictively the beginnings of the Andes - and just kilometres from Tierra del Fuego National Park, it is one of the most breathtaking settings either of us have come across yet.
After getting settled in to our very lovely and laid back hostel on our first night, we awoke bright and early the next day with two clear aims: check out the centre of town and later, make our way up to the Glacier Martial, situated just outside the city. Our hostel (La Posta) is about a twenty minute walk out of town, so we took a stroll along the beachfront (and somehow wandered through some kind of organized running event??) until we got to Ushuaia's main street or calle, San Martin. There we checked out our surroundings, and visited the tourist information centre to obtain a map of the Glacier.
From here, we began our long journey up a winding road, lined with cabanas and swiss style chalets, for about 7kms until we reached the autosilla or chairlift which took us about a kilometre closer to our goal. At this point things started to get a bit cold. We geared up with jackets, hats and gloves and began the final part of our ascent up the mountain to the Glacier itself. Windy, cold, tough, snow stinging our faces. That pretty much sums it up for the following kilometre of the hike. But before too long, we had made it to the foot of the enormous slab of ice. In a nutshell, Ushuaia is situated at sea level, Glacier Martial at over 1000 metres - epic. It was all pretty spectacular, very surreal, but we think we'll let the pictures do the talking :). After reacehing our apex, we slowly made our way back down the slope (not before stopping to bottle our own glacial water!) and walked all the way back to our hostel. All told, we probably walked close to 20 kms, so we were pretty knackered by the time we got back, and slept like a pair of stones.
Because we hadn't had enough punishment yet, we decided to aim for the Tierra del Fuego National Park the next day (today!) We had booked a seat on the mini bus for 9.15 am and he arrived pretty much right on time and we headed down to the park. We stopped briefly to pay our entrance fee and when we reached the beginning of the trail we had planned to attempt, it was snowing (though our driver inisisted "No hace frio, hace calor. Esta todo en tu cabeza!" "It's not cold, it's warm. it's all in your head!") Even as we began though we could see it was a beautiful setting - on the shores of a huge lake, completely deserted with the mountains in the back ground. Our trail took us along the shores of this lake, in and out of many beautiful little bays and back into the beech forests again. Truly amazing! Gradually it cleared up and the water was an incredible blue. We saw some great wildlife too, especially sea birds- huge gulls and some beautiful kites. Check out the pics because it's so difficult to describe! This hike was about 8 kms and took us 3 hours. We stopped for lunch by the side of the road, with an amazing view of the mountains and a lodge. We took another small hike to a delta, which supposedly had cormorants but we think it was actually a bunny island...bunnies everywhere! More amzing views here, along a huge river. Soon it was time to head back and catch our mini bus back to town, but before we left the park our driver took us to the end of Ruta 3, the end of Argentina, and coincidentally also the southernmost road in the world - keep going and you get to Antartica! Here, we stopped for some classic photo ops, and began heading out of the park by bus, going via the glacier agaain (long story) and practising Spanish with our driver along the way. After a relatively tiring and adventurous day, we eventually made it back to our hostel. Phew!
Well that's the end of another update, be sure to check out our new photos as well as FOR THE FIRST TIME the video section! Also, we will be out of touch in the next one to two weeks, so don't be alarmed if we seem to digitally disappear in that time. Once again, look forward to hearing from you all and hope you're enjoying reading about our adventures!
All our love,
Ryan and Hayley
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