USHUAIA: at the end of the world

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For over a century, Ushuaia has been considered the southernmost city in earth and was the physical representation of the imaginary "end of the world". And that's how it felt for me. To get there from El Chalten I had to go back first to El Calafate (3h), take the bus to Rio Gallego (4h) and connect there to Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego (12h) which includes crossing the Streit of Magellan. If we add connecting times, I left El Chaltėn at 7:30pm and arrived to Ushuaua at 8:00pm on the next day. El fin del mundo!

And we were lucky as there was no delay on boarding the ferryboat to cross the streit. One day before they had to suspend the boat service for 6 hours due to strong winds. There was also no delay crossing the borders: the coasts of the Magellan streit belong to Chile, so we had to leave and re-enter Argentina in a couple of hours.

Crossing the streit waters took about one hour. The wind was so strong that passengers were asked to stay in the passengers' room. And this was a "calm" day.

Ushuaia is located in a wide and calm bay on the southern coast of Tierra del Fuego island. From the harbour facing south you can see the Beagle Channel and Isla Navarino (Chile).

The Falkland question is very present in Ushuaia's and Argentina's daily life. Next to the Malvinas' memorial is also Plaza Peru at a very prominent location.

The weather  was calmed with not much wind. It was the rigth time for a sea excursion to the Beagle channel and its smaller islands.

We  stopped at Island H and went for a short walk. Very pretty and interesting to see how life has adapted to this soils & weather.

For me but also Nestor and Hector reached here the southermost point of our trips. Reason enough for a drink later in a pub with local Beagle beer.

The way back to Ushuaia went very fast, asking and learning about the misteries of the Mate drinking custom in Argentina.

An attempt to walk to a small glacier on the next morning failed due to the strong rain. We ended having hot chocolate with Lorenzo and Suyi.

As other remote locations in the world, Ushuaia was first used as prison. The facilities have been now concerted into a museum.

Here photos from an  excursion to the Tierra del Fuego National Park on the next day.

In the evenning I could not resist to try the Antartic King Crab  and had a good time with Nestor and Richard.

My next station was Puerto Madryn, around 1.600 km north of Ushuaia, two international border crossings and the ferryboat for the Magellan Strait. I was very happy to find a seat available on Friday's flight. It would take 4 hours, have 3 stops, was carried by the Argentinean Air Force on a Fokker F28, and costed about the same as the bus ticket.  I took it.