Ushuaia & Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego

Last night I had a chance to check out a little bit of Ushuaia. It´s a neat city, but there's really not a whole lot to do here. I visited a museum on the history of the region, but it took only about 20 minutes to walk through.

After that I found a restaurant and had an unbelievable dinner. The wine was fantastic, the empanadas were the best I´ve ever had and the lamb for the main course was juicy and tender. I probably shouldn´t have had a glass of Tia Maria with dessert though.

I walked home feeling fairly tipsy and stopped into a convenience store for a bottle of water. As I turned to leave the girl behind the counter's eyes got big and she started saying something rather quickly in spanish. Of course I couldn´t understand a word of it, so I grabbed the handle, pushed the door open and walked straight into one of the three private phone booths they had for public use. I looked down and found myself face to face with a, now, very startled elderly woman. Oops.

Fortunately the rest of the walk to my hostel was uneventful. I got up this morning and headed over to Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego. I´d read in my guide books that once you´ve been to one of the great parks, like Los Glaciares, Tierra del Fuego can be kind of a letdown. They were right.

Don´t get me wrong, the scenery was great, but it just couldn´t compare. The place does remind me a lot of Alaska, though without the bears and the scenery isn't quite as dramatic.

There really aren´t any great trails in the park, so after a few short and not very worthwhile ones, I grabbed lunch at the cafeteria and headed over to hike one of the neatest trails I´ve ever hiked.

The trail wound around the shore of a lake, Lago Roca, and through a pretty crazy field of boulders and downed trees. It looked like the entire mountainside just collapsed years ago.

From there, it rejoined the shore and we got some great views of the area. The lake is kind of a pale green color and mountains rose thousands of feet all around it. After about 2.5 miles, I finally got to the end of the trail, and the end of Argentina.

The hike took us to the border between Chile and Argentina. It was pretty neat being able to hike to an international border. There was a marker there and several signs warning you not to cross. It was really interesting.

After that I hiked back to catch the bus to Ushuaia. Tomorrow, rather than head back into the park, I'm going to try to get on a tour of the Beagle Channel, which is the waterway that borders the southern edge of Tierra del Fuego. You can either do one that goes to an island and see sea lions or one that contains a penguin colony. I'm hoping to do the penguin colony.

Well, that's all for now. Hopefully tomorrow I can write about some penguins.