HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Crossing 2 borders in under 2 hours
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Not feeling the greatest with an upset tummy
WORD OF THE DAY: How windy is it?
DISTANCE TRAVELLED: Need to check this with Gray…..
With a border crossing today and the unexpectedness of how long they take we left the Hotel Savoy and Punta Arenas at 7.30am this morning. Man it was great to get out of a bed and not worry about things touching the side of the tent and getting wet. The things we have to worry about when on the road! I woke with an upset tummy this morning (diarrhea) not a great thing to have on a truck day, but I was hoping it would be a passing thing; I wasn’t in any pain just some churning in the stomach now and then.
Rosita’s new ‘boots’ look all nice and shiny. She’ll feel like a new woman and all ready for carnival in 3 week’s time. Woo woo!!! Let’s just hope nothing else happens, at least for the next section anyway. In her defence she does cop it a lot when we are driving on roads that aren’t paved and in national parks all considered she is doing alright for an old bird.
Our first stop this morning was at a disbanded fishing village / estancia right on the sea’s edge and also was. The buildings were great to take some photos of and there was also a ship wreck on the beach that you could climb all over if you wanted to. It was quite windy here and in turn was a little cold, but we all braved the weather for around 30 minutes to stretch our legs and get some classic photos of buildings that have been allowed to fall into disrepair, which is a shame.
Another hours drive got us to the ferry terminal and our timing could have been better as we pulled up the ferry was just arriving. One of the vehicles that came off the ferry was a German company called Rotel. They have a big truck similar to ours, but not as good, and attached to that like a trailer is what we have termed it ‘the coffin beds’. It is another truck size trailer in tow, but it had approx. 40 windows and it is where our German friends sleep at night. It looks hilarious and we all want to know exactly how much room they get in the ‘coffin beds’. So we drove straight on with a public bus and some local cars for the 25 minute crossing on an open top ferry across the Magellan Strait, which is the only way to get to Ushuaia by road. We saw one porpoise following the ferry for like 3 seconds and then it was time to get back on the truck for our departure.
This is Kate’s and mine last truck day till the 03rd of February when we pull out of Buenos Aires. The guys have 4 more days, with 3125KM and I am guessing around 40 hours in the truck. Ha ha not for these 2 little black ducks. Kate is super excited about having so much time in BA and as the days go on we are so happy we made the decision to fly. You just keep the smile off our faces! Especially after this morning’s road conditions, it was unpaved roads all morning, and they weren’t even graded so it made for a very BUMPY bouncing morning, like nearly everything had to be tied down just about or it would bounce right off the seats or off the overheads. About 20 minutes from the Chile border, there was a car on the side of the road that waved us down, he had a flat tyre. But after trying to inflate that one which was no good and then looking at the spare, which was also a dud, he locked up and he came to the border with us to get some RAAA (Royal Argentinian Automobile Association) equivalent! Geeze aren’t we just the nicest people. I have to say it was in the middle of nowhere and the poor guy had probably been waiting all day for a car to come by. I can see why hardly anyone comes this way as the roads are in such a bad state. Thank goodness Rosita had on new boots is all I can say. I am not sure how long the old ones would have lasted on that section.
We got to the Chilean border at 1.40pm. As we still had some fresh food on board the truck and the timing we made this a lunch stop as well. So 50m from the border out comes the tables and the cooking group got to work. I wasn’t feeling in the mood for sandwiches again, so after using the toilet and still having an upset tummy, we went to the small canteen that they had at the border and I ordered the equivalent of a 2 minute noodle bowl, a coke to try and settle my tummy and I couldn’t resist and a small hot dog as well. Hmmmmmm far better than the salad sandwiches that they rest were having and it all only cost me 6AUD. With food in our bellies it was time to run the Chilean border control and we were all processed and back on the truck within 25 minutes! Woo Hoo!!!!! The drive to the Argentinian border was 20 minutes and we were processed through there in 45 minutes. Yay, I think this has been the smoothest crossings to date. The immigration officers didn’t want us all in the building, so we were able to give our passports to Mark and go back to the truck. Me via the toilets with my dodgy tummy still causing me some grief.
With that being Kate’s and mine last Chile crossing we were back on the road again for another 300KM to get us to Ushuaia. The unfortunate thing for the guys is that they have to travel back the same way in 4 day’s time right up to the ferry crossing before getting back onto mainland, another border crossing after that and back into Argentina. Man that road was tough and thank goodness we aren’t doing that section. Really is was rough.
We finally arrived into Ushuaia at 7.30pm. That made it another 12 hour day on the trot and Mark had arranged with the camp site to provide dinner for us which was nice and we had a great BBQ with a massive piece of steak, a chorizo and plenty of salads. With Tierra del Paine’s frosty morning still fresh in everyone’s mind, pretty much all of us were interested in upgrading from the tents into the dorms at the camp site. After making the enquiry’s after we had arrived you could just about guess it, they had 12 beds available over 2 rooms and there were 18 of us. So after a little talking, the couples were going to share bunks for the first night (more beds were freeing up the next night) some people wanted to still camp so in the end there were enough beds for everyone. So Kate and I were back in first to one of the rooms and we were followed in by a few people that ‘told’ us who had what beds and pretty much we just had to fit in, which Kate and I were to be separated. Now this normally would not have been a problem, but the way we were spoken to and ‘told’ was what irked me and I had a small huff and made my way out of the building before I let it rip what my true thoughts were. But the time I got back to the truck I had decided to camp as well and get a little space, which at the back of my mind I was asking myself am I crazy as it was freezing cold, but with Kate’s extra blanket and a little preparation I rekon I would be okay in the tent in single digit weather conditions. I did have one person offer to swap beds with me after my tent was up so Kate and I could be together, which was nice, and I also had a said person come out and apologize, which was also nice, but the tent was up and pretty much my bed was made, so I decided to stay in the tent for the next 2 nights. Once I dig in my heals, there’s no going back. I even had an offer of the spare mattress going on the floor, but I also declined that offer as well. A bit of camping in subzero conditions (with a wind to boot) is character building and as Minalu puts it ‘an adventure’. Yeah after 25 days of camping the ‘adventure’ wears off a little, but it is what I signed up for so I will be in a tent in the most southern city in the world!
Ushuaia is the capital city of Tierra del Fuego Province, Argentina. It is commonly regarded as the southernmost city in the world and is located in a wide bay on the southern coast of Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, bounded on the north by the Martial mountain range and on the south by the Beagle Channel. TheSelk’nam Indians, also called the Ona, first arrived in Tierra del Fuego about 10,000 years ago. The southern group of the Selk’nam, the Yaghan (also known as Yámana), occupied what is now Ushuaia, living in continual conflict with the northern inhabitants of the island.
The British ship HMS Beagle under the command of Captain Robert FitzRoy first reached the channel on January 29, 1833 during its maiden voyage surveying Tierra del Fuego. The city was originally named by early British missionaries using the native Yámana name for the area. Much of the early history of the city and its hinterland is described in Lucas Bridges’s book Uttermost Part of the Earth (1948). The name Ushuaia first appears in letters and reports of the South American Mission Society in England. The British missionary Waite Hockin Stirling became the first European to live in Ushuaia when he stayed with the Yámana people between the 18th of January and mid-September 1869. In 1870 more British missionaries arrived to establish a small settlement. The following year the first marriage was performed. During 1872, 36 baptisms and 7 marriages and the first European birth (Thomas Despard Bridges) in Tierra del Fuego were registered. The first house constructed in Ushuaia was a pre-assembled 3 room home prepared in the Falkland Islands in 1870 for Reverend Thomas Bridges. One room was for the Bridges family, a second was for a Yámana married couple, while the third served as the chapel.
During 1873 Juan and Clara Lawrence, the first Argentine citizens to visit Ushuaia, arrived to teach school. That same year the Argentine President Julio Argentino Roca promoted the establishment of a penal colony for re-offenders, modeled after one in Tasmania, Australia, in an effort to secure permanent residents from Argentina and to help establish Argentine sovereignty over all of Tierra del Fuego. But only after the Boundary treaty of 1881 between Chile and Argentina did formal efforts get under way to establish the township and its prison.
During the 1880s, many gold prospectors came to Ushuaia following rumors of large gold fields, which proved to be false. Ushuaia suffered several epidemics, including typhus, pertussis, and measles, that decimated the native population. But because the Yámana were not included in census data the exact numbers lost are not known. The first census was held in 1893 with 113 men and 36 women living in Ushuaia. The prison was formally announced in an Executive order in 1896. By 1911 the Yámana had all practically disappeared, so the mission was closed. The population grew to 1,558 by the 1914 census.
In 1896 the prison received its first inmates, mainly re-offenders and dangerous prisoners transferred from Buenos Aires but also some political prisoners. A separate military prison opened in 1903 at the nearby Puerto Golondrina. The two prisons merged in 1910, and that combined complex still stands today. It operated until 1947, when President Juan Perón closed it by executive order in response to the many reports of abuse and unsafe practices. Most of the guards stayed in Ushuaia, while the prisoners were relocated to other jails farther north. After the prison closed, it became a part of the Base Naval Ushuaia (Spanish), functioning as a storage and office facility until the early 1990s. Later it was converted into the current Museo Maritimo de Ushuaia.
During the first half of the 20th century, the city centered around a prison built by the Argentine government to increase the Argentine population here and to ensure Argentine sovereignty over Tierra del Fuego. The prison was intended for repeat offenders and serious criminals, following the example of the British in Tasmania and the French in Devil's Island. Escape from Tierra del Fuego was similarly difficult, although two prisoners managed to escape into the surrounding area for a few weeks. The prison population thus became forced colonists and spent much of their time building the town with timber from the forest around the prison. They also built a railway to the settlement, now a tourist attraction known as the End of the World Train (Tren del Fin del Mundo), the southernmost railway in the world.
Ushuaia has long been described as the southernmost city in the world. While there are settlements farther south, the only one of any notable size is Puerto Williams, a Chilean settlement of some 2000 residents (mostly families of the nearby military bases). Puerto Williams also calls itself the world's southernmost city, but this claim is dubious as the Chilean government itself defines a city as an urban entity with more than 5,000 inhabitants. As a center of population, commerce, and culture, and as a town of significant size and importance, Ushuaia however clearly qualifies as a city. A 1998 article in the newspaper Clarín reported that the designation "Southernmost city in the world" had been transferred to Puerto Williams by a joint committee from Argentina and Chile, but this was denied by Argentine authorities, and the Secretariat of Tourism of Argentina continues to use the slogan in official documentation and web sites.
Ushuaia has a subpolar oceanic climate with temperatures average 1.6 °C in the coolest month (July), and 10.4 °C in the warmest month (January). The record low is−25 °C, and record high 29 °C (85 °F) (December). The record low ever recorded in summer is −6 °C. On average the city experiences 200 days of light rain or snow a year, with many cloudy and foggy days. Despite receiving only 530mm on average annual precipitation, Ushuaia is very humid.
After dinner Kate and I had a chat and she has decided to pass on adding some time to the end of her trip, so in turn I am not heading to Cancun but to Barbados instead!!! I am disappointed that she is not coming, but it also great to now be able to finalize the last of my trip. I think 7 nights in the sun after my 6 months in South America comes to an end will be just what the doctor will order. So if anyone is free from 7-14 May, you are more than welcome to join me sunning myself with a cocktail in hand in BARBADOS!!!! I’m liking the sounds of that already, and the GREAT thing is I think I will be able to include the flights on my Round the World ticket which is an additional bonus!
BARBADOS HERE I COME!!!
So after a massive day in the truck, a massive meal it was time to leave the warmth of the common room and head back to my icy tent. In between all the meals, tent set up etc… I had also made some dashes to the outside toilets still with my dodgy tummy. Probably not the best place to be in a tent if I need to make a night dash, but hopefully the tummy will hold till morning and all will be well in tummyland!
So welcome back to Ushuaia for the next 2 nights. It is still freezing down here even 11 weeks after being here the first time. Does this place ever warm up?
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