Ushuaia

The bus ride to Ushuaia was rather interesting... we left Puerto Natales at 6:30 in the morning on a really squeaky bus. All I wanted to do was go back to sleep, but the squeaking made that impossible. Finally, when I thought that sleep was imminent, I was rudely awakened by the bus steward because we had to get off. We had to change bus in what can only be described as the middle of nowhere. We couldn´t see anything for miles, but somehow the buses knew to meet there. Frankly, we couldn´t figure out where.

Upon arrival in Ushuaia, we were quite hungry. We dropped off our bags at the hostel, and went out looking for a restaurant. We ended up finding an all you can eat meat place. ALL YOU CAN EAT!!! Plus, it only cost 30 pesos (6 pounds)! What an excellent place.

The next day, we went on a boat ride on the Beagle Canal. This is where you can see yet more sea lions, but most of all the last lighthouse at the bottom of the world. It´s nothing special, I suppose, but it´s an amusing landmark. It´s pretty much just a light house on a rock. It´s fully automated, so there isn´t even a person to wave to once you get there.

On the second day, we went to the Ushuaia National Park where we did a nice easy trek. It only took us about 4 hours, which is nice because then we had the rest of the day to do what we liked. It was also probably my favorite of the treks so far, as we got to see many more animals than on any of the previous ones. The whole park is not very well marked, though. We ended up walking along a road for an hour not being entirely sure if it was the right way. It got us to a bus, though, and that took us back to Ushuaia where we went to the aquarium. It was nice, because all the animals can be found in the Beagle Canal. In the evening we went to see a show called HMS Beagle. It was a really nice musical about Charles Darwin´s voyage to Tierra del Fuego. The entire auditorium (including the stage) was a life size scale model of the HMS Beagle. We both ended up learning a lot about Darwin´s life and his adventures in South America.

Right now we are on our way up north to Bariloche. We´ve had to make a stop in Rio Gallegos, the most pointless town in the world. It´s a hub town, so every traveller must stop by here at some point, but there really is absolutely nothing to do, so everyone avoids it like the plague. We had to stop off here once to get to El Chalten, but managed to get a bus out minutes after arriving. This time we got a bus out of here a couple hours later. We feared we might have to spend a night here, so this is relatively good news. Tomorrow we stop off in Commodore Rivadavia for about 12 hours where we´ll be able to get a bus to Bariloche. I´m sure we´ll find something to occupy ourselves whilst we´re there.