photos to be added
Saturday 08 – Day 70 – Ushuaia
When we landed at Ushuaia airport, there were no taxis waiting, so we had to queue for about ten minutes, at which point one arrived – could Ushuaia really be a ‘one horse town’? No, after a few minutes, others started arriving and the queue rapidly dwindled. However, the taxi that picked us up had a problem – its handbrake didn’t work, and as we were loading the luggage into the boot, it began to roll. At least the driver recognised the address of our accommodation and took us straight there.
Driving through Ushuaia, the capital of Argentine Tierra del Fuego and the most southerly city in the world, we got the impression of a no-nonsense sort of a place oriented around survival in a difficult climate – it looked like we imagine an Alaskan or northern Canadian town might look. We passed the docks, some industrial sites, offices, and many small, closely-packed houses. Everything was low-rise, low-cost and low maintenance. We later learned that Ushuaia is designated a tax-free zone by the Argentine government to encourage people and businesses to move there. As well as tourism, there is shipping and fishing, natural gas, energy, chemicals, and factories assembling consumer products like phones and washing machines.
Our accomodation Cabañas del Martial was situated halfway up a long, steep and winding road that snaked out of the back of the town up to the small ski resort below the Martial Glacier. It consist of four or five self-contained cabins set out of a grassy hillside, surrounded by forest, with great views of the harbour below and the surrounding mountains. Rather than staying in one of the self-contained cabins, we found we were staying in part of the owners’ house, with a lovely room ensuite. The owners, Monica and Salvador were a lovely couple, and everything was very homely. They were so attentive while we were staying with them – making restaurant bookings, confirming pickups, calling taxis, and doing our washing. We started referring to them as “Mum and Dad”.
After we settled in we went for short walk around the immediate area. Later, we went for dinner at the restaurant next-door, as booked for us by Monica. It was a high-class place, with a fantastic panoramic view of the city and the mountains.
Sunday 09 – Day 71 – Ushuaia
We got up quite early, as we had booked a tour which was picking us up at 08:00am. We had arranged 7:30 breakfast with Monica – juice, coffee, croissants and toast, and we were waiting outside in the sunshine by 08:00am. The pickup however did not occur, and about 8:40 Monica was on the phone to the tour company. The guide had gone to the wrong place – Cabañas Cumbre, just up the road, instead of Cabañas Martial. When he did arrive, a few minutes later, Monica ticked him off in Spanish.
We got in the LandRover with the sheepish guide, Joachin, a couple of elderly American ladies, and an Irish ‘couple’ that turned out to be brother and sister, and set of for the nearby National Park. It wasn’t a long drive – about 30 minutes, but the second half of it (within the National Park) was on dirt tracks. We came to a parking area at a small beach of black sand with a strange post office built on a jetty projecting out into the sea – “the post office at the end of the world”. The whole scene surrounded by snow-capped mountains. After buying and posting cards back to England, we went for a short, but beautiful walk in the forest close to the sea, which was obviously challenging enough for some of the old dears on the tour. We realised that this was going to be a relaxing day, rather than a challenging one.
Afterwards, we climbed back into the LandRover and drove a short way to another parking place, where we did another, equally short, but slightly more strenuous, walk up to a mirador on a hill top. While we admired the view and took photographs, Joachim sat down, pulled some items out of his backpack, and served us all coffee and home-made chocolates, very civilised. Following that we walked down to the seam and along a boardwalk to the “lands End” of Argentina the Fin Del Mundo – end of the world. Here we saw many maps of Argentina with clear message “Los Malvinas son Argentina”, know to us as the Falklands this was yet another clear statement that in this area they very clearly think of them as part of Argentina.
Exercise over for the day we headed to lunch, which turned out to be in a few small geodesics, which turned out to be kitchen and dining room of the tour company’s catering operation. Here we had lunch at trestle tables with a bunch of people on other of the company’s tours. Lunch was OK, but the wine made up for it, good old Argentine Malbec!
On returning to Ushuaia, it was still only mid-afternoon, so Ingrid and I had Joachin drop us off in the downtown area so we could have a look around.
We had a walk along the sea front, admiring the snow-capped mountains surrounding the Beagle Channel; looked at the ships entering and leaving the port; and tried to work out where we would be boarding the Ventus Australis in a few days time. After that we walked back along Calle San Martin past tourist shops, restaurants, bars and cafés. We went into a cafe called Tanta Sara and had coffees and cakes, then we carried on walking along stopping a supermarket to buy a few bits for tea. with our shopping complete we headed back to our accommodation and enjoyed an evening in with snacks and wine.
Monday 10 – Day 72 – Ushuaia
With no particular schedule for the day we got up and had breakfast late. Then, when we were ready, about 11:00 we set off up the road at the back of the cabañas towards the Martial Glacier on foot.
It was cool and cloudy, but quite humid. We walked around a couple of loops of the winding road up through the forest, for about a kilometre to where the road ended at Ushuaia’s mini-ski resort. Or at least, it’s a ski resort in Winter. when hundreds of Brazilian skiers visit it. In Summer, its a very wide, very steep, very uneven dirt track, with a mothballed ski lift running in the forest alongside. The road brought us to the bottom of the ski slope, where there was a closed ski lift, a nice-looking tea shop, and the Cabañas Cumbre accomodation, which kept getting mixed up with our own Cabañas Martial.
We hiked up a couple of kilometres of steep snowless ski-slope towards the glacier, which we kept glimpsing through the forest above us. It was a exhausting climb because of its steepness, but at least it wasn’t hot and humid as it was when we climbed Ceras Campanario. Eventually we reached the top of the ski slope, and arrived at the upper terminus of the ski lift, where there was a cafe – currently closed.
There were two paths that continued upwards: one through the forest of increasingly stunted trees, and one alongside the stream that carried the meltwater from the glacier down to the sea. We walked up the path along the stream for about another kilometre, at which point the forest track rejoined it. Here there was a great unobstructed view of the martial glacier above and an information board in both Spanish and English. The Martial Glacier it turned out is actually three small adjacent “hanging glaciers” that form a cirque around the concancave mountainside that was towering above us. Here too there was a choice of two paths that continued onward: a very steep one cutting upwards across the terminal moraine to the base of the glacier, and a much shallower one around the flank of the mountain to a mirador about 500m away, referred to as “La Filo”. We followed the path, which at times was quite precarious, to the promised mirador. The view both backward, towards the glacier, and forwards, of Ushuaia, the beagle channel, and the surrounding mountains was spectacular. It was just a pity that the weather wasn’t better.
On descending to the bottom of the ski slope, we treated ourselves to lunch in the tea shop. It was soooo English it was hard to remember that we weren’t at the Henley regatta. The decor was all white, pink and green, and the menu was all cream teas and lemon meringue pie. The gift shop sold tea pots and gardening gloves. The walk back down to the cabañas was done under the threat of darkening skies, which delivered the threatened deluge just as we got back.
In the evening, we got a taxi into Ushuaia and had dinner at at a traditional restaurant Bodegón Fueguino, which was located in one of the oldest surviving buildings in Ushuaia built by the pioneers that founded the colony.
Tuesday 11 – Day 73 – Ushuaia and Vestus Australis
We were due to join our cruise late that afternoon, but we could check in at the cruise company’s offices in town from 10:00. So, we packed up and after breakfast asked Salvador to order us a taxi. He and Monica couldn’t just do this, they had to ring the cruise company, confirm the address of their office, and make sure that we could deposit our luggage with them. After breakfast, we said adieu to “Mum and Dad” and took our taxi into to the cruise company’s office; and by 11:00, we had checked in, received our ‘boarding cards’, undergone some preliminary emigration process, and left our luggage.
With a few hours to spare I managed to find a hairdresser on San Martin for a much needed hair cut. Barrie went off for a walk and after my hair cut I waited for him in Tanta Sara where we had a very slow lunch – partly because we were in no hurry, and partly because the service was so slow. After lunch, we did a little bit of souvenir shopping and then we went to the local museum, which told the story of Ushuaia, including the history of the prison in the area through a number of models of people, supplemented by a commentary on an MP3 device and headphones. At one point Barrie locked me in jail but did later release me! We made all this last till 5pm when it was time to board the cruise ship for our next Adventure.