It´s the end of the world as we know it...

A sign painted on a wall in Ushuaia reads "Ushuaia, the end of the world and the beginning of everything". Hmmmm... maybe we were supposed to do our trip in the other direction?...

Hamburgers on Christmas Eve (actually, they really hit the spot), but yesterday offered more excitement and fun. After a long ride in a van to Tierra del Fuego´s first settlement, a ranch near the mouth of the Beagle Channel, a passageway which connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans without having to go around the more-exposed Cape Horn, we hopped on a small boat and were taken to an island that is covered with penguins. As we landed on the beach, you could see the little black and white guys all along the beach, in the water, and a few coming up to our boat to check it out. The more you looked, the more you saw that there were penguins everywhere! Two kinds, and lots of newborn. The penguins were a bit hard to photograph as they always seem to be moving, whether it is waddling back and forth with mouthfuls of grass for building nests, flapping their wings and lifting their heads skyward to make mating calls, or clicking beaks with each other as part of mating rituals.

Today we toured the vacant prison that was the original reason for establishing the town of Ushuaia. Prisoners that committed crimes repeatedly were sent away to this undeveloped "nowhere" at the end of the world. The prison had cells but no walls around its yard. If prisoners escaped, there was nowhere for them to go.

Okay, further south still...

Went to El Chalten, Argentina to see Mount Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre, some highly sought-after prizes for climbers. We could see them from the bus and from town as we drove in. The other tourists were snapping photos like mad, even from the bus. I thought "wait until you're off the bus for a better picture; heck, wait until you hike up closer to it and the shot will just get better". Well, I guess the other tourists knew what I didn't: these mountains live in the clouds most of the time. In the afternoon, the mountains disappeared. We tried hiking to a viewpoint looking toward Cerro Torre the next day, but couldn't see anything and the day was mostly an opportunity to test the quality of our rain gear. On the next day, I tried hiking toward Fitz Roy but quickly decided it wasn't getting better, so I turned back to spend the day with Veronica, who had already concluded that it wouldn't be possible to see anything. It was a good thing that Veronica snapped some photos on the day we arrived.
So I guess the moral of the story is to take advantage of what you have available to you in the moment. Hmmm... there's probably a good metaphor for life within that...
So, we got skunked out by the weather in the El Chelten area. Still, the trails were quite pretty, and the views on the day we arrived were quite nice. Add to this a great waffleria, a good brew pub and some great fresh pasta, and life was still quite good.

Feeling like we had had our fill of hiking anyway after all the backpacking in Torres del Paine National Park, we were itching for something different. We grabbed some plane tickets and are now in Ushuaia - about as far south as you can go. Everyone here is madly shopping for Christmas, while we were racing to hit the grocery store before it closes. With most things closed tomorrow, we have filled the little fridge in our little cabin with roasted chicken so that we don't starve on Christmas day. We also have an electric kettle so we will be able to prepare some instant mashed potatoes, and really live it up.

Being nearly the "end of the road", the town is filled with lots of people who are just finishing cycling, motorcycling or RV'ing from Alaska to the tip of South America.

Tomorrow will probably be a quiet day, a chance to relax and read, and on Saturday we will be taken out to an island where we will get to walk around amongst the many penguins that live there. Should be good.

And then we went south, waaaaay south

After exploring next to the equator in the Galapagos and in Quito, Ecuador, we hopped a series of flights and were soon all the way down past 50 degrees South in Chile, headed for Patagonia, the land of amazing mountains, glaciers, and legendary wind and cold.

We made our way to the little town of Puerto Natales and stocked up as best we could on a Sunday (all the shops were closed). We found some decent camping gear to rent and bought some basic supplies at the grocery store. With 10 days of oatmeal, a few days of pasta (we would buy some more food along the way) and just a couple of shirts each (9 days, 2 shirts!), we headed for Torres del Paine National Park and its Circuito Grande, a 7 to 10 day trek that takes you all the way around the famous Towers. We were ready for the cold and wind that Patagonia is famous for, and were caught off-guard: the first two days were sunny and hot. Neither of us bothered to pack shorts, and we had minimal sunscreen (we expected to be covered by warm clothing, except for our faces), so we soon felt overheated. We picked our way through a less-than-glamourous first day that followed a double-track road past endless piles of cow manure to get to our first windy campground. There, I was immediately treated to the free opinions of the German "smart asses" (who soon became great friends of ours for the rest of the trek) who loved to comment on how I was setting up our rental tent. Lutz and Frank soon became both the source and target of much sarcastic wit and humourous insult that flew back and forth for 9 days. We also met some other Canadians, one of whom was carrying the biggest, heaviest pack on the trail, yet was faster than anyone. The other, Jenny, was the grateful recipient of a birthday chocolate bar during the trek, complete with a couple of wooden matches as candles on the "cake". And finally, we met a Chilean local who twisted his knee on the first day and then decided to go for the rest of the 9 day circuit. Campgrounds varied from windy to unlevel to mosquito-infested to sometimes pleasant. Hot showers at a few campgrounds were a pleasant surprise. The scenery was always spectactular (except for the cow manure day) and the variety was incredible. Rolling hills, forests, mountains, lakes, rivers, and more. While the Torres steal the main credit, the biggest highlights of doing the full circuit (most people just hike the front side) were the great scenery in the cirque at the top of the Valle del Frances (amazing mountains in every direction) and the mind-blowing view when you reach the top of Gardner Pass and see the entire massive Grey Glacier open up below you. The glacier is huge, and to see a glacier from above is a really spectacular vantage point. The glacier was always below us off one side of the trail for about 2 days. Everywhere you looked, you could see a blue colour in the ice that truly seems unnatural, impossible, absolutely beautiful. And from the campground just past the toe of the glacier, you could look off the shore and see huge icebergs floating by on the lake, ice that you had just heard break off the glacier minutes ago.

The packs were heavy, especially with the rental gear and food that weren't ultralight. We supplemented our food supplies from a few small food kiosks along the way, but by the end of the trip, we probably won't crave salami or pasta for quite a while. Still, it was well worth it to enjoy the views over Glacier Grey and enjoy the solitude of the less-travelled back of the circuit.

After the trek, we were treated to a ride all the way back to Puerto Natales with Lutz and Frank in their rental car. An interesting sight, considering this Fiat would barely fit the two of them and their backpacks, nevermind four people and four packs. After some clever packing, we all fit in, but for the drive out of the park, Veronica got to see the scenery from one side of the car and I could see out the other side, but the stack of backpacks between us in the back seat prevented any other views. We would pass the camera back and forth over the piles of packs to show the other person what they were missing...

More Galapagos photos

A little cake for a special occasion on the sailboat,
Some bluefooted boobies hanging out by the waves at the end of the day,
A Magnificent Frigatebird puffing up to impress a mate,
A giant land tortoise having a stretch.

More Galapagos photos... and more to come...

Here are a few more Galapagos photos:
Veronica hanging out on the beach with several noisy sea lion friends
One of the famous giant tortoises
Penguins, yes penguins in the tropics!
A huge marine iguana, warming up on the rocks
the great scenery from the top of the tiny island of Bartolome

We'll try to post some more later...

No posts, and stay tuned for photos...

We leave tomorrow to begin about 10 days of backpacking through Torres del Paine National Park, doing the circuit around the "Towers". So, no blog postings for a while.

A couple of other Galapagos photos...

The internet connection here is really struggling with photos. Here are a couple of the Galapagos photos, and we will upload more when we get to somewhere with a faster connection.