Ushuaia

Ver mapa más grande

It was a long bus trip from Punta Arenas to Ushuaia, leaving early in the morning in the dar, and arriving late at night. There was a lot of faffing on the trip, including a ferry trip over to Tierra del Fuego, and waits at both sides of the border between Chile and Argentina. In fact the Argentinian side was the slowest border crossing I've done yet, they even gave everyone's bag a cursory search. Unfortunately on these roads in the south it gets very muddy and you actually can't see out of the windows of the bus after while.

When I got Ushuaia I was glad there were touts from the hostel at the bus station, as I'd lost the relevant part of my guidebook, and in southern chile most hostels had been shut for the winter too. The hostel was up on a rather icy hill, and would have had a good view, but I was never there in the light. I got up earlyish to go and get my bus ticket for the next day, and it was still dark until nearly 10am and everything was shut. In the morning I went for a walk up the hill behing the town. It was very icy and I nearly turned back as there were steps at one point which were just solid ice. It was a pleasant walk through the forest, but there wasn't really any view over the town. In the afternoon I went to a couple of museums, the larger of which was really good and had tonnes of stuff, about the region and antarctica, and it was in an old prison so it also had prison stuff (including a picture of Inverary Jail!). There was some interesting things, I learned that the Beagle had come here (the town is on the Beagle channel) and taken 4 natives back to Britain. They were named York Minster, Boat Memory, Fuegia Basket and Jemmy Button. One died of smallpox in the UK, but the other three returned a few years later on the Beagle, this time Darwin was aboard, and he had some fairly uncomplementary things to say about the natives. I also found another interesting random Scotsman that nobady's heard off: William Spiers Bruce. And did you know the explorer Nordenskjold had a penguin-skin carpet in his house?

I did some shopping in the town too, getting some postcards and a T-shirt with penguins on (sadly the penguins were up north for the winter). I aslo went to the post office to get the special southernmost city in the world stamp, practically the only reason to go there. Met a nice Mexican girl in the hostel that evening, had an early night as it was time for another epic bus journey the next day. Ushuaia was quite a nice place, it was far richer than the towns in Chilean Patagonia, with lots of expensive shops for rich tourists and skiers.

Photos:

Walk through the woods behind Ushuaia.

Ushuaia from behind.

In the prison museum.

Special bonus photo! Great isn't it?