Ushuaia

so i'm going to concede that Elizabeth's blog recaps are going to be more accurate and informative than anything i can possibly provide, with better formatting to boot, so i'll direct you towards her site which can be accessed here. but instead of giving up and letting her take all the credit, i'm going to forge onward with this and try to give my own, specifically eriks, perspective on these events.

after our great ice adventure we boarded a plane the next morning and went further south to ushuaia, the end of the world. we heard someone describe it there "as a specific place for specific challenges" and i thought it applied nicely. on the island of tierra del fuego, this is where the transcontinental highway ends and where boat trips down to antarctica begin. and then subsequently end there later too, about 2 weeks later. but the place itself is gorgeous, with ocean on one side of the town and mountains framing it on the other. the place had a particularly damp, cool feel which i'm sure turns into a flat out frozen, freezing feel when you aren't there in the peak of summer.

we stayed the first night in town in a hostel before heading out to the national park to do some camping. about a 40 minute drive outside of town, we spent the next three nights in a rented tent. between apples, granola bars, chocolate, nuts, and a soup for dinner everynight, we were stocked for all our food needs.

after a clear, cool day that was perfect for hiking, we pitched our tent, worked out a fire, and got our soup cooking. Elizabeth also decided to drop her camera into the soup for effect. it did not make the soup taste any better. but if that was a portent for things to come, we should've known there would be many more things dropping....like rain out of the sky. i went to sleep dry and woke up in the middle of the night confused as to why my toes were wet and my side was in a puddle of water. turns out our rain fly did not want to do it's duty in full.

the next day we tried to dry out the puddles while preventing more rain from getting in. towards the end of the day when the rain broke a bit we hit a trail and hiked to the border with Chile. upon our return, we notified the management of our rain fly issue and bolstered our protection with some cut up garbage bags. good times, especially since we slept dryly the next two nights. our last day in the park we did a 8 hike/peak ascent that led us to the top of one of the mountains and visibility of the city Ushuaia down below.

the next day we made out way back into town and went on our boat ride of the beagle channel. we were promised penguins, sea lions, and a variety of other animal and bird life. this was true. what they didn't tell us was that the ride back would be so slow that they would put on the movie "march of the penguins." such is life. but penguins and sea lions are funny. look. sea lions use each other for pillows. that's funny to me.


the next morning we got on a plane to travel to buenos aires and then to lima, peru. i did not have any sea lions on the plane to be my pillow. only crying babies with parents who don't like their babies being used that way. parents can be so lame.