El Fin del Mundo, ice fields and into Chile.

For those of you who have wondered what the end of the world would be like, I can tell you- spectacular. Picture snow capped mountains around a stretch of water which connects the Atlantic and Pacific (the Beagle Channel), islands, Chile on the one side and Argentina on the other. Living on the islands are sea lions, penguins, cormorants and other birds. On the Argentinian side colourful houses pile up against the mountain. Ushuaia- is in the middle of nowhere (the first thing we did on our arrival was to book a flight out a week later- we decided we had done buses for a while) but is surprisingly big. 60,000 people live a life of beautiful scenery but freezing cold for the majority of the year and with no easy escape. We were there at the height of summer and our souvenirs were walking trousers and hats- we lived in all the layers contained in our backpacks.

The shops are good- in fact retail therapy is highly possible. When we got out of bed the second day, and admired the view, we realised why- a huge cruise ship had arrived (carrying 2000 people). Ushuaia is the base for Antartic cruises and for the passengers -after 2 weeks stuck with 2000 other people, you can only imagine the exitement of setting forth onland and dispensing with some pesos.

We met quite a few people who were in town for the Antartic and the recommendation for anyone thinking of doing the trip is think small. A ship with 100 people which is better equiped for the ice can dock at the Falklands, South Georgia and let you off onto the Antratic ice. A passenger on the larger, more luxurious ship told us that weather had prevented them from getting off at all.

In Ushuaia we finally got to do the backpacker thing and hang out with fellow travellers, thus far we had been chatting to Argentinian holidaymakers in our broken Spanish (hence not many long conversations). John, Jim and Ali were our play mates for the week and together we ate, rode horses in spectacular scenery and walked in the national park. John turned out to be a master chef and cooked us steak and veggies for 3 nights running in his hostal.

We went miles by boat to the Harberton Estancia- the estancia built by the European founder of Ushuaia. Thomas Bridges was an Anglican missionary from the early 1800´s and appears to have been a good guy- he could speak the native language fluently, compiled a dictionary of their language and when offered 20,000 hectares anywhere in the country to retire in, by the Argentinian government- chose a part of the Beagle Channel to be near his native flock (4 hours sailing from Ushuaia). There was something quite poignant about leaving the estancia on our tourist boat and watching the lone figure of his direct descendant, wave us off- dwarfed by his remote mountain range and corrugated metal buidings.

Thoughts from the Glaciers

Next stop was Calafate- the base to explore the Argentinian ice fields. Here, we stayed in our first dorm. We wern´t really roughing it as there were only 2 bunks in a dorm and they had nice new thick mattresses. The hostal had a fab view of the bright blue Lago Argentina (blue from the glacial minerals that flow into it) and was really rather nice. Unfortunately there were a few building snags to be fixed, it having only opened a few months previously, which meant that when I shut the door of the ladies bathroom when we got up at 6am one morning- we couldn´t get out again and had to bang the door until we were rescued.

Perrito Moreno, the most famous glacier is stunning- all huge wavey blue ice. Its the only advancing glacier left in South America (everything else is receding) but doesn´t advance too much before rupturing, retreating and starting its advance again. We also did an all day boat trip which took us to many of the other glaciers that can be visited and saw numerous spectacular neon blue icebergs and fabulous scenery, mountains, wavey, jaggedy glaciers flowing off mountains into Lago Argentino. The deepest part of the lake is near the Upsala glacier (the channel it cut) and is apparently at least 700 m deep, and possibly 1000 m deep (no one has been there). 60 m of the glacier is above the water and 700m is below. Mindblowing!

Into Chile

Spectacular scenery again (we are feasting our senses everyday) accompanied our 5 hour bus ride to Puerto Natales in Chile. Puerto Natales is a fabulously nowhere town. The little corrugated metal houses were bleak, wind howled, the streets were empty, shop signs creaked and there was a feeling of lack of colour and of being far from everything- fantastic! We were ecstatic to find El Living- a veggie cafe run by an English couple with fab salads, juices, soup and sarnies. English mags, the Guardian International and the sofas made it somewhere we couldn´t bare to leave (we didn´t eat anywhere else in the 2 days we were in town). On our second day we jumped on a 7am bus (oh yes- lots of early starts- but I can´t say I find them much easier) to the internationally renowned Torres del Paine national park.

We could have gone on the one day tour for not much more cash but after spending the Upsala glacier trip with 300 other tourists we decided that we had enough of the tourist group tour and had to do this ourselves even if we missed out on some of the park we would still see a good part of it. We were eventually dropped off deep inside, having passed the famous granite towers of Paine, the horns of Paine and lots of stunning blue glacial water lakes. The first hour of the walk was up a steep, scree hill with the wind howling. Putting one foot in front of each other was such a battle with the wind that I was on the verge of morphing into Scott of the Antartic when a horse came down the slope in front of us. We were in the middle of mountains, with no one around and a horse appears! It was then followed by 2 others, followed by nervous looking riders- one lady told us she didn´t know how the horses were still upright the wind had been so strong. We finished after walking through the greenest of green fields, surrounded by towering peaks. I have to admit we had a number of picnics but then again Esther had a bad cold and needed to be conserved to fight another day.

We were in Puerto Natales to take the weekly ferry which for 3 days goes up through the fjords and past the glaciers of the Far South of Chile to Puerto Montt. This didn´t happen owing to the engines deciding to cease on the way to our rendez vous and the passengers being taken off by lifeboats etc as witnessed by Chilean TV. After a wrangle for our cash and a race to book alternative means out of this tiny town, we found ourselves together with 4 other boat refugee backpackers (including Jim from Ushuaia) in a cheap and v basic backpacker place 3 hours further South in Punta Arenas. The next day we flew out in the rain with Kieran from Ireland to a hopefully sunnier place further up this thin country (the Chileans still think of it as the South but it took over a 2 flight to get there). Ultimate destination being Pucon, in the heart of the Chilean Lake District.