Wednesday, January 19, 2011

South: Punta Arenas to Ushuaia, take two

What the heck?


Day 13:

I wake up at 4:30 and feel like crap.  Must be the two Fan-Schops I drank last night.  I make the short trek from the hotel to the bus station.  We're going to try to cross the Straits of Magellan again.  It's less windy today and everyone waiting with me outside the station is in a great mood.

After a nap and a little Neruda, we approach the ferry landing.  The bus zooms past over 50 tractor trailers that have been queueing since yesterday and jumps to the front of the line.  It seems a bit unfair.  We drive onto the ferry, I get out, and watch the rest of the loading process from above.

That's our bus.

Is that a double decker bus trying to get on?

It got stuck and took about fifteen hair raising minutes for it to come unstuck.  The ferry had to push itself hard onto the landing to slide the bus onto the ramp.

I found the loading process fascinating.  When I was a kid, I made a large car ferry out of paper and loaded my Tomica cars onto it just like this.

Crossing the Straits

Storming Normandy (or Argentinean Tierra del Fuego)

The crossing takes 26 minutes.  We then speed through a washboard gravel road.  I swear our driver is drifting our bus like it's a 180SX.  He is a maestro.  I think he's faster here than on tarmac.  Did I mention that he's doing all this while eating a ham and cheese sandwich?  

There are a lot of sheep here.

At noon, we cross the final border.  Ushuaia is 303 km away.


This what the Argentines are claiming as theirs.  Ambitious.


At 1:13 p.m., we reach Rio Grande.  It's a depressing, dreary town built on a petro-boom that is in full swing.  A convoy of three Mercedes Sprinter vans waits for us.  They will take us to Ushuaia.


Our driver is huge.  He would be considered a big guy even here in America.  He has a pack of Marlboro reds on the dash and he doesn't wear a seatbelt.  This guy lives dangerously.  230 km to go.

Convoy rest stop in Tolhuin.

My journey alone is about to end.  I saw very few solo travelers.  I highly recommend it.  Here are some of the pros of traveling alone that I jotted down:
  • no judgment (of what you like)
  • no compromises
  • self-reliance
  • no one else to blame if you don't have a good time
  • introspective
  • no distractions- you sense more
  • less security = more thrilling
  • you appreciate human contact more
Enterprising Argentine army officers thought they could make a fortune on beaver pelt so they introduced a few dozen Canadian beavers to Tierra del Fuego.  Beaver pelt immediately fell out of fashion.  In the subsequent decades, the beaver population exploded, there are dams everywhere, and we've got an ecological mess.


Our driver continues to live dangerously.  At one point, he's using his cell phone, his CB radio, drinking a Coke (with screw cap), and picking his teeth with one of those plastic swords you get with rum cocktails-- all at the same time.


We arrive in Ushuaia, I find our hotel and am reunited with my wife (I shall refer to her as Marge or Marge Simpson in my future posts).  


Part one is done.  And the South American trip is only half over!  As a compromise, I told Marge that she can do whatever and go wherever she wants and I will follow her.  I have no idea what she has planned.  I can't wait.

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