On Friday, I explored Ushuaia and visited a few museums. The best one in town is the museum of the ex-prison. This is the interesting history that I alluded to earlier. Ushuaia got its start as an Argentine penal colony, kind of like the Australia of South America. The prison was as fortified as Alcatraz (with less escapees, actually), but the irony is that the prisoners were allowed, and often encouraged, to work in the town. The reasoning was that if they wanted to escape, there's no where to go. Look at a map, the very southernmost region of the continent is a series of islands with freezing water surrounding them. And while you're looking, you'll notice that, at the moment, I'm as close to the south pole as I am to Buenos Aires. I thought that news was kind of interesting.
That evening, I bought a boat ticket for a lap around the Beagle canal, named after the boat in which Charles Darwin sailed here. It's filled with the type of isolated islands that Darwin used to justify his theories on evolution. The most notable were a colony of sea lions, and several others with interesting species of birds. I never thought that I'd use interesting and birds in the same sentence (other than "that bird tasted interesting"), but the ones down here are really bizarre. Nothing like the crap bombers I'm used to seeing in the US.
Next day, Saturday. Along with an Italian guy and a French girl from the hostel, I explored the Tierra Del Fuego National park. It had been raining all throughout the previous night, and sporadically that day, so the place was extremely muddy. I just about lost my boots several times. We'd be walking along a trail, and the 80 lb. Italian guy would do a little jig across a wet spot, and the French girl would hop along with equal aplomb, then I'd come along with all the finesse of an elephant in free fall and be up to my waist in seconds. I'm still filthy.
Today. I went to a chairlift to view the local glacier, but it was down for repairs, so my friend-of-the-day and I decided to climb up ourselves. And once we reached the viewpoint, we decided to keep going. So I've finally done it, I've climbed a glacier. Now, this isn't the Bs As on ice that you saw last week, it was more like a high altitude snow river. But, combined with the freshly falling snow, I felt like quite the adventurer. We went up incredibly high, well past any marked paths and intelligent stopping points. In retrospect, it probably wasn't the best idea, but we made it back and had a ton of fun. Take a look.
Click here to see how we got down.
I have a ticket back to Bs As tomorrow, but there's a pilot's strike going on right now, so we'll have to see what happens. Either way, I'm sure glad not to be taking a bus back. It took me a combined 70 hours to get here, and I'm ready for a flight! I'll let you know how it goes.
M
