As described in an
earlier post, Ushuaia, the little city right down at the bottom of Sth America
is also known as the ‘end of the world’.
For the geographically inclined of you, Ushuaia is further south than
New Zealand.
It’s a port city handling
containers and tourists like us wanting to either visit Patagonia or Antarctica
with one longish main street catering for tourists wanting to shop and a
seemingly disproportionate number and range of eating places.
We arrived back
into Ushuaia from Antarctica to an acrid smell and barricades across numerous
streets, forcing the bus back to our hotel to perform a few interesting
manoeuvres to get us there.
Public
service employed locals were striking and the acrid smell was from burning of car
tyres stacked at numerous locations in the middle of blockaded roads.
Cat & Cal only
had one night in Ushuaia, so we said our goodbyes at a fabulous little
restaurant that night before their 12 hr bus journey northwards early next
morning. It had been truly delightful to
travel and share the experience with them.
We had decided to
rent a car for a day to do some exploring in our own time. It was a Sunday and all were closed except
one. Ever tried to rent a car from
someone who only speaks Spanish and we only speak English. He was as amused as we were.
We have driven on
the opposite side of the road before but now we were not only confronted by
every sign being in Spanish, we were also trying to dodge many of the
Argentinian drivers who did seem to be able to read the same signs either.
First destination
was the Tierra del Fuego National Park with its large mountains, beech forests,
lichens and other ‘parasitic’ plants growing on host trees.
It was nice to be able to take our time and
go where we wanted to. After leaving the
park and navigating our way back and through Ushuaia, we headed north towards
Rio Grande.
Only a few kms out
of town, we started noticing the Polica and as we progressed further, more and
more Policia grouped on the side of the road.
Maybe the strike from yesterday had gone sour. A few more kms up the road provided an answer
to all the Policia presence when politely signalled to stop.
Out of the bushes
on one side of this main road screamed a dirt bike, crossed in front of us and
disappeared into trees on the other side!
Soon afterwards came another followed by a quad bike. The Polica standing in front of us then waved
us to proceed. Further on we were not
only stopped many more time but were also confronted by hundreds of cars coming
towards us, flags out of windows, emergency lights flashing, all racing to the
next vantage point to watch their favourite racer go by.
We were in the
midst of a major Argentinian motor bike rally!
The further north
we went, the more dense the oncoming fans, Policia and racing bikes became and
the slower we travelled. Eventually we
were constantly simply crawling down the road, so we stopped at a great viewing
location of not just the racers and fans but also Lake Fagamo.
Driving with the
flow of fans back towards Ushuaia was even more interesting. They were constantly trying to race ahead and
get to another point to stop and watch, so double lines on roads meant nothing. It was ‘normal’ for 3 or 4 cars to simply
pull out and pass our slow moving queue and if confronted by oncoming vehicles,
pull over onto the dirt verge on the opposite side of the road, still moving whilst
letting the oncoming cars pass between us.
Then some would pull back onto our side, force their way through the
queue onto the right hand dirt verge, then scream off along it before sliding
to a halt and all the occupants scrambling out and running to watch a bike
hurtle out of a bush or up the side of a nearby mountain.
The following
morning we had booked a small tour to Penguin Island, so found ourselves in a
little bus with about 18 others on a windy dirt road heading for a boat. This trip took about 90 mins with a few
scenery stops and talks about the local aboriginal people of whom now number just
one.
The boat and 10 minute ride to the island departed from
what was once a farm with numerous picturesque old buildings and some of the
best ‘loos with a view’ that we have ever seen.
 |
| the loos with views |
We were greeted by very noisy Gentoo and Magellanic penguins along with sole
remaining King penguin. The other King
penguins had already gone to sea for winter.
 |
| one King amongst the Gentoo penguins |
On the trip back in
the bus, we learned more about Argentina from an American working in Beunos
Aires. She told of the impact of an
inflation rate currently running at approx. 30% on the people. Many of them are trying to get their hands on
American $’s because it holds its value better than their own currency. If they can’t get access to $US they spend
whatever they earn as soon as they get it, hence the reason a lot of people
seemingly eating out. This also
explained why we could exchange $US for about 30% better than the official cash
rate.
We could not leave
Ushuaia without trying one of the Argentinian bbq’s so on our last night,
joined by 2 fellow Antarctic travellers, we enjoyed an all you can eat buffet
for about $25 pp. Let us simply say that
the meat was very succulent and there was a lot of it.
Ushuaia was founded
mainly on a convict and maritime past, the worse Argentinian convicts being
sent to Ushuaia in a similar fashion as Port Arthur in Tasmania. The conditions were very harsh from what we
saw in their museums.
We found the people
of Ushuaia to be very reserved and almost dour initially, but once we invested
the time and some humour with them, they soon loosened up releasing their own
form of humour and warmth.
For more photos of Ushuaia just click on the link below:
