date el gusto, es el fin del mundo...

"Enjoy yourself, it's the end of the world"... clever little marketing slogan they've got going on in Ushuaia, and enjoy myself I did.

I am currently making the most of my stopover in Rio Gallegos, en route to El Calafate on another 18 hour bus ride that departed at 5 am this morning from Ushuaia. I opted to just stay awake rather than wake up around 4, which proved to be an excellent option, as I was able to enjoy a few more hours in the company of the great people I met in my hostel the past 4 days. Not only was the hostel the most fun, clean place I have ever stayed, I fell in love with the charming town of Ushuaia itself. I could have stayed put there for longer, but onward ho! I wish I had a picture to capture the look on my face when flying into the airport on Sunday afternoon from Buenos Aires. Seriously the most beautiful scenery for an airplane touchdown...the mountains of the Tierro del Fuego National Park that surround the town are incredible and the crisp, clean legitimately "buenos aires" was, well, a breath of fresh air... the town itself while geared to tourists on the main drag wasn't obnoxiously over-run with tourists as I imagined and I think March just might be the perfect time to visit. January and February are the peak times, and it felt really calm and quiet walking around the town. Definitely not a feeling of foreign invasion at all. It was about 55 degrees with intermittent sun, clouds, rain, and it felt great after a month of humid heat.



So, I definitely kicked my Patagonia portion of my trip off with a serious bang. I woke up early on Monday morning to get myself onto to the first shuttle into Tierro del Fuego to do some hiking, but didn't have an exact plan for what hike I wanted to do yet. On the bus I started chatting with a man from Australia and a woman from Germany who were also in my hostel and we decided to join forces to do the all out hike of hikes, "El Cierro Guanaco." They say that it takes 4 hours up and 4 hours down (we knocked it out in 5.5, no big deal) and in order to do it you have to leave your information at the little kiosk before entering. Umm, I know it was marked strenuous, but we had no idea how intense this was going to be. When they say steep they mean uphill the whole time and several stretches towards the very top where the mountain was essentially parallel to our bodies. I don't know what was more crazy, the ascent or the descent. On the descent we were seriously loopy, bodies like marionettes is the comparison we drew. But, I officially conquered the most intense, most amazing hike I have ever experienced and two days later I can barely walk. So worth it though!!!:) Chris, Connie, and I made a great little team and hopefully the pictures can convey a bit of what we encountered. What is not captured is the unforeseen swamp portion of the hike, where a clearing of pure mud and swamp appeared with no other option to but to trudge through - except for this funny little spongy green "pods", so it looked like we were characters in a video game trying to maneuver ourselves across to drier land. Well, I was wearing tennis so did the rest of the day with sopping wet, mud feet. The pics also do not convey just how high up we were, on top of the world and the end of the world, nor do they demonstrate how cold it was at the top. Hands completely numb, noses like faucets, yeah gloves would have been smart. When we reached the summit we huddled behind a small wind barrier, took some pictures and ate our sandwiches at warp speed and then we had to make a quick exit. A cute little fox appeared right on cue for a photo opp., and stuck around in hopes of enjoying some of our "dodgy" sandwiches. Ahhh, what a day! We returned to town after giving ourselves several pats on the back for our accomplishment then enjoyed some fabulous parrilla and vino with a big international dinner that formed from our hostel. I bonded with a fun girl from Dallas and the hilarious hostel staff and we had a really fun time at the local Irish Pub. Scots, Brits, Ushuaians, Aussies, Germans, what a blast...












Today was an amusing and involved process of crossing into Chile in order to cross the Magellan Strait and then promptly re-enter Argentina again. A whole lot of passport stamping, cattle hurding, and bag scanning, but hey, I can say I was in Chile if only for 1 hour AND in the Magellan Strait:) I joined Connie from Germany for this El Calafate journey and we should arrive at our hostel around 1 am. Tomorrow morn we are heading to see the main draw of the area, the Perito Moreno Glacier in Parque Nacional Las Glaciares. It is supposed to be really impressive - we will take a boat to get right up next to it and then do some hikes around for different vantage points.

Chau for now folks!

xoxo