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We left Buenos Aires for Puerto Madryn, here we took a tour to see penguins, sea lions and elephant seals. Its was so strange to be standing in a hot desert-like landscape staring a penguin in the face. We also saw some funny looking Armadillos running along in the car park. Along the drive we saw even more wildlife...wild Lamas and Ostriches. There wasn´t alot else to do there so we left a day later and headed south. But before we left we invested in a tent (which should help us save some money by camping).
Next stop was a very boring industrial town called Rio Gallegos. We were only there (like all the other backpackers) waiting for the next available bus to Ushuaia (the southern most city in the world). Straight away we put our new tent to use, and started saving some valuable Pesos. However as we had no gas stove to cook we spent our days eating bread and jam and walking around the ghost town. We visited a museum which had dinosaur bones but thats about as interesting as the area got. Two days later we got the bus to Ushuaia.
The bus journey was long, alot of hopping on and off the bus at the border crossings between Argentina and Chile and then back into Argentina again. And also the ferry boat that took us to the island (where Ushuaia is) called Tierra Del Fuego. The flat, dry and bleak landscape that had been following us since Buenos Aires suddenly turned into snow-capped mountains. And as we approached in the dark you could see Ushuaia nestled between the mountains and the Beagle Channel twinkling in the night, with a massive cruise ship docked in the port (bound for Antarctica), it looked very cosy. We had reached ´the end of the world´. The nights in our new tent were very cold, alot different to sunny Brazil. But we survived. We spent a night in Tierra Del Fuego National Park, which wasn´t anything special but nice to visit nonetheless. The last day we hiked to a small glacier, at the top of the mountain you could look back and see all of Ushuaia in the distance. As it was so high up there was some snow which we climbed and slid down.
We are currently in Chile, the town of Puerto Natales, which is the stop-off point for Torres Del Paine National Park (one of the must see places in Chile). Tomorrow we are leaving for a minimum of five days hiking. Its not a tour, you hike independently so it should be challenging. I am trying to persuade Beth to do the 10 day hike, but she doesn´t like the idea of walking for 10 days non-stop in the mountains.
Lots of Love
Tom and Beth
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