Chapter 6: Ushuaia y Parque National de Los Glaciares

We quickly traveled from the northernmost city, Iguazú, to the southernmost, Ushuaia - the city at the end of the world, as they love to exploit. As it turns out, Ushuaia actually IS amazing and gorgeous. Mountains surround the city on all sides. They're white with snow so the vista from any given point is perfect. We spent a few days in the Tierra del Fuego National Park. At this point, we got our first taste of "everything costs more than you think it will," a symptom of Argentina's particularly fast and repetitive inflation. The bus driver says that the campsite costs $12 AR but when you get there it costs $18 AR. The Book says $5 AR. We didn't even account for the bus ticket or Park Fee which turned out to be a total of $110 AR each. But none-the-less, the park was amazing.

The omnipresent, and quite friendly Chimango in Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego.

We camped close to Cerro Guanaco and hiked to the top the next day. It was steep and quite a climb but not unattainable. And, if you do reach the top, you're rewarded with beautiful views. We took 6 hours and were well worn out by the time we got back. We decided to take the next day a little easy and just do a 6km coastal hike. Seemed nice, and was, but it was our first time hiking with backpacks on in quite a while. So once again, we were all tuckered out by the time we reached the edge of the park and rather than walk the next 12 km into town we met a nice couple who drove us the rest of the way. Ushuaia as a city is beautiful and so the next day we really DID take it easy and just walked into town from our campsite and toured the prison. The prison was not technically a penal colony but often was treated and viewed by outsiders as such. It was something of a South American Siberia. We also walked downtown to eat some chocolate - something that Patagonia is evidently famous for.

A hardened criminal, right where he belongs.

There's plenty of evidence all over Ushuaia and Tierra del Fuego of the indiginous population: the Yámana. History is widely available in the prison and town. In the National Park you can view the archeological sites of their Middens (trash piles outside the front door of their dwellings - the Yámana consistently shifted the opening of their homes away from the wind so the pile becomes more of a moat over the years.). They were canoe going people who were all but whiped out by the colonial populations. They were viewed as a particularly savage race. Their language was their culture and the only thing they really built were canoes. They were likely not very cooperative in helping the colonists. Some Yamaná were taken, to be "civilized," back to Europe but the venture was a failure and they were dropped back off on the shores of Tierra del Fuego. Jimmy Button, one of the Indigenous that traveled to Europe is known to be responsible for killing several missionaries himself. The last living Yámana, and only speaker of its language, is said to be over 80 years old.

The next day we headed for a 2 day hike over a mountain pass, el Paso de la Oveja. The first day we spent walking through a beautiful valley. We began to ascend the mountain only during the last few hours of the day. Our guidebook described a serene mountain lake whose shores would make an ideal campsite. It also said we could follow the guanaco tracks over the pass. It turns out there's still a lot of snow in November. We camped in the snow with no lake in sight, and did a fire dance to get warm, which actually made the stove work. Before reaching the top of the pass on the second day we spent 4 hours in snow at times up to our waist. For a while it seemed that we would not make it. We certainly couldn't see the guanaco tracks. The snow was pristine and beautiful. When we finally did reach the pass we were rewarded with a small yellow stake - the first trail marker since the afternoon before. As we traversed beyond the pass, we walked high above the canyon and had some fun sliding down the steep sides of the mountain on our butts with our rain pants on.

Stepping outside of our comfort zone. Paso de la Oveja, Ushuaia, AR.

We got back to Ushuaia after 10 hours of hiking and somehow still managed to walk into town to buy dinner supplies and make a delicious seafood soup. Courtney fell asleep with her head on the table and we weren't able to make part two of dinner so we ate the ravioli for breakfast and realized it was Thanksgiving. We Cheers'd and then set out to leave Tierra Del Fuego and head for El Calafate.

The journey was long and cold. Ushuaia is quite balmy compared to the rest of the Island of Tierra del Fuego and at one point we were riding in the back of a pickup for 90 km with several large logs of wood and a couple of bags of raw fish as our company. Although they were going EXACTLY where we needed to go, we were MUCH too cold and got out at the Chilean boarder where we met two other truck drivers who took us a good distance - Rio Gallegos - where we caught the bus to El Calafate.

We've been hitchhiking around because buses are too expensive. Our Spanish is so much better now thanks to the days and days we've spent with truck drivers trying to communicate. This country is enormous and no matter where we went there was 1000 km to pass through first and it would take us at least 2 days of hitching to get there. But Argentinians, so far, are really nice and love to teach Spanish so that's lucky. Some are polite, while others are downright friendly, buying us sweets, sharing meals with us, helping us when we were down and out.

Everyone who comes to El Calafate is there to see an enormous glacier, Perito Moreno. So we went and watched it slowly advance upon us. It was beautiful. A must see. They know this and rob you blind - the bus there picks you up 1/2 hour late and leaves 1/2 hour early and costs $1 AR per Km - $80 AR in total. Then you pay the park entrance fee of $60 AR. The best is when you learn that residents pay $6 AR or less. Sigh. But then, it's only fair. The Argentinian National Parks are the only or one of the few National Park systems in the world that are self funded. So we're proud to participate in that.

Perito Moreno, calving. El Calafate, AR

Perito Moreno is inside of Los Glaciares National Park. Half of the park is made up of the largest continental ice extension after Antarctica. This ice field creates 47 big glaciers, 13 of which flow to the Atlantic. There are also more than 200 smaller glaciers in the park, unconnected to the Ice Caps. The glaciers are remarkably low down making it possible to approach them on foot. Perito Moreno is roughly the size of Buenos Aires. It is so popular because of it's easy visibility, provided there's not a blizzard going on, it's location on the lake which makes a quite stunning vista and the fact that it is one of the very few advancing and stable glaciers in the world. In the afternoon when it warmed up a bit we saw it calving - shedding 5 story towers of impacted snow into the lake below; it is advancing by 3 meters per day. We were able to ride in a boat right up to it (very dangerous supposedly, and now that we've seen the calving, we can see why) to fish out an enormous chunk of ice that rich people can put in their $30 ounce of bourbon. But it's the bourbon that cost money, not the ice so we got a few chunks for our water bottle. Mmmm Fresh!

Later that day we also went to a bird reserve on Laguna Nimez for free that no one knows about and that they have evidently neglected to put in the guide books for the past 6 years. Good thing our guide book is an antique. The reserve was home to many species. The prize birds were the pink Chilean flamingos, with wings the color of sunset. It was beautiful. Beautiful.


We got on a bus to El Chalten to do some more hiking. El Chalten is in the northern part of Los Glaciares National Park and the trekking capital of Argentina. The expected route was short - 3 days - and full of beautiful views of Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre Mountains; a few stunning lakes, glaciers and valleys as well. We passed the downtime chatting with friendly Germans Tourists who had followed us all the way from our campsite in El Calafate to each of our destinations in El Chalten. At one point we accidentally took a wrong turn and ended up 1 km south of where we wanted to be. Fortunately the trail we met up with took us to the right place so the worst that happened was an extra 45 min of walking through gorgeous valleys. Plus, the trail we turned on to took us away from all the other tourists - El Chalten is packed with everyone in the country who wants to take a walk - for several hours and was not without it's vistas.

The "wrong" trail. El Chaltén.