Taking a walk

I didn't just do tacky touristy things that amused me. I also went to the National Park which is 20 km west of Ushuaia to join in the fun and games.

Typically there's a very well organised system to get there. A series of minibuses waits by the port and when you approach a driver leaps up and shows you a map - you get to choose, according to which trail you'd like to do, where the bus drops you off and picks you up. It's actually slightly wearing, this efficiency. I'm always three steps behind - what trails? oh, um, I don't know. Do I have to decide now? etc.

Anyway our bus fillled up. A very laconic Irishman said to me, "So, taking a walk?" which made me laugh. There's no interesting answer is there? Yes is what I said. I chose the 6.5 km beaches route - and gasped when we pulled up at a small bay right on the Beagle Channel. It was just gorgeous, the sun was shining, the sea a limpid blue, the mountains of Chile in the distance. There was a small creaking pier with the World's Most Southerly Post Office on it (also slightly tedious now, this southernmost tag for everything that happens in Ushuaia), a penguin shaped postbox (natch) and a well marked path which wove up through beech forests, huge spreading trees draped in pale green beardy moss, and right down to little coves on the shore. I wasn't alone - there were several other groups of hikers but really, it was a fantastic stroll. While I waited for my bus at the other end I walked some more, through the park - one of the loveliest campsites I've ever seen, a single tent pitched by the water with a small fire beside it and the mountains behind - and to the marked end of Route 40, an apparently famous road which winds along the spine of the Andes to northern Argentina. Here the road runs out and the world, as we know it, supposedly ends.

I arrived back in town very hungry and headed for La Barra where I tucked into an enormous steak - the size of two hands, yum yum - and a glass of delish Malbec. A perfect day.

Ding ding!

Also, in Ushuaia, I went on a sight-seeing tour, on a Routemaster bus. It was one of the original models, with individual light-bulbs screwed into wall sockets and a cubby hole under the stairs. Me and a lot of bewildered Argentinians swung round town and they all laughed at our 'conductor' Monica (she gave us our tickets as little paper fares just like being on the buses) and her amusing stories which I didn't, of course, understand. I did get the fact that there'd been a group of Croatians settlers who came looking for gold? or was it whales? and that the suburb of identical box houses with orange walls and brown roofs - nice colour combo - was built for a large group of Italian immigrants. Lots of strange groups of people came to this god-forsaken place including missionaries of course, all trying to persuade the hairy Yamana to give up their stripy body paint and sea lion hunting - and even now most of the people I met in town were from somewhere else in Argentina, escaping the humid streets of Buenos Aires or the dread unemployment of the flat central plains.

Ushuaia's raison d'etre for a long time was a huge prison where the most murderous criminals in Argentina were sent (no point in escaping I guess, where would you go?) and from the top deck of our bus I saw, through its windows, glittering chandeliers, great swagged curtains and polished mahogany tables laid out for smart functions. It's clearly no longer a prison. Actually it's a museum - apparently rather dull though I was disappointed to miss the dramatic recreation show (prisoners? penguins?) which airs 3 times a week. Obviously I forgot to ask the most pressing question - why a London bus? And how did it get here?

We trundled on, passing the very seedy looking Sheik 'nightclub' - which wasn't part of Monica's spiel - with The Church of Jesus El Buen Pastor (the good shepherd) right across the road, glaring over at sin city. Which came first I wonder? And who's sticking up two fingers to who? BTW I've noticed several 'nightclubs' in these parts and they all have an Arab theme. Huh?

We drove over to the other side of the harbour, to the flying club and saw several small planes swoop across the bay and glide down onto the grass. Monica told us that this had been the original airport in Ushuaia but, because the landing strip effectively ran into the sea, it had proved very difficult for all but the best pilots to land a plane there. I bet. But what a way to go. Out of the sky into the freezing waters of the Beagle - you'd be your very own iceburg in a matter of minutes and then maybe penguins would come and skate all over you.

Ancient races, fiery faces

I did go to the smallest museum in town - the Yamana Museum which looked like it might be old-fashioned and dusty, the only kind of museum I really like.

It was excellent - two or three badly carpeted rooms with wonky maps and drawings stuck to the walls with blue tack, little figurines in glass cases and lots of old photographs. I learnt all kinds of stuff - 20,000 years ago the Beagle Channel was a huge glaciar and 14,000 (or was it 7000?) years ago indigenous Indians arrived in Tierra del Fuego which was the last land mass in the world to be inhabited. You can see why - it's a bloody long way to come (even Antartica is two days away on a cruise-ship) - and when you get there the weather's terrible and the beer's a rip-off. But the Yamana and the Shelk'nam and the Manekenk and the Kaweslar all made it eventually. They were hunter-gatherers who wore furry seal skins and lived on mussels and deer which they caught with bows and arrows. What a wild bunch! With fierce beautiful faces and great hanks of thick black hair - now I understand the hairiness of Fueguinos. And even better, during their strange coming-of-age rituals they covered their heads with odd bucket-shaped masks and painted themselves in black, white and red stripes and dots - I've never seen madder looking folk.

Hanging around

While other healthy Europeans in my hotel hiked and biked and explored and saw the things there are to see in Ushuaia, I'm afraid that I, well travelled cynical old bag(gage) that I am (how many more museums how many more national parks, places of historic interest, tours and trips must I do before I die, spare me please), mostly stayed in the hotel and tried to work on my book. I walked in the afternoons around the back streets of the town - all kinds of amusing wooden ski-resort architecture, I particularly liked the triangle houses, some were tiny ie just slightly bigger than a tent, who lives in these? - and went down to La Barra for cheap drinks and old rockers music on the stereo. As I entered the door each night the cheeky boy behind the bar would grin at me and immediately pick up a bottle of red wine and start opening it. Small wonder that this was where I went. I did try to cover the wider world of drinking in Ushuaia and had drinks at both the Dublin and Galway 'pubs' - one was empty save for the barman who didn't get off the phone and charged me 15 pesos (£3) for a glass of draught beer; the other actually had a few customers in it and charged me 18 pesos (£3.50) for something similar. Unbelievable. I almost choked when I had to pay. It was St Patricks Day, pointed out to the swarthy brooding owner by an Irish girl - he said he knew and pointed to the small plaster model of the saint he'd put by the whisky bottles and the lit church candle. Clearly he's not Irish, has never been to Ireland and knows nothing about Irish 'customs'.

More impressive

I went, on a dreary Sunday, (Argentina seems to shut down on a Sunday - not just shops but restaurants too) to a small cafe to have lunch. On the table in the small pot with its sachets of mustard, mayonaise and ketchup was a tiny pair of orange handled scissors, with which to cut open the sachets. I couldn't believe it and burst out laughing, looking madder than ever.

Argentina is the most organised country I think I've ever been to. It's the Switzerland of South America, the Germany of the southern Hemisphere, the United States of Efficiency. No wonder the Nazis loved it.

Ok so it's expensive in Ushuaia. But everything works - the hotels are comfortable, warm and they all have WIFI, the streets are clean, buses leave on time, the taxis are properly metered (that's a first for me in Latin America - in most other countries the 'meter' ticks over to its own tune), correct directions are given by people in the street (another first - I can't tell you the amount of times in LA I've gone on a wild goose chase simply because locals don't want to offend a foreigner by saying "I don't know" and instead make routes up). I got my flight back to Buenos Aires changed without a problem - the airline office has a queuing system like the butchers' counter in a supermarket - and wandered through the city by day and night without being bothered by anyone.

t's not even noisy like other parts of South America. No blaring tvs or constant radio, no neighbours shrieking nor the cries of street vendors. One lovely evening the sounds of tango seeped under the door of a dancehall and in the backlight there was the shadow of a teacher stretching up his arms and flicking out his feet. Several times at dawn I was woken by the low resonant boom of a ship's hron as it sailed out of the harbour - but what better noise than that?

Things not to do in Ushuaia on a budget

1 Drink beer. The brew favoured here, Quilmes Cristal, is thin, weak stuff and a small bottle costs £3.

2 Drink wine in the large cafeteria/bar on the waterfront. It may be attractively decorated with old kitchen implements, 60s advertising posters and a 50ft counter. It may sell delicious home-made croissants, pastries and chocolate laid out on trays. It may have swirling tango music on the stereo. There's no excuse for charging £4 for a titchy glass of wine.

3 Buy stamps. £1 each. I won't be sending postcards of penguins to my friends and family.

4 Visit museums, national parks or any vaguely tourist attraction. Entrance fees are the highest I've EVER paid. ANYWHERE.

5 Go. It's just bloody expensive. Best to come with your life savings or not bother (which would be a shame because it is, after all, at The End of the Earth. In the Land of Fire).

Eskimos

Last night in my local (hah! I've only been in Argentina for a week but I'm settling in nicely) four men came in for pizza, wearing zip-up black rubber suits and looking like Eskimos. Or giant Penguins...

Onwards and upwards

I am staying in a new hotel in a fancy Ushuaian neighbourhood with big chalet style houses, lawns and carved wooden detailing on their porches. It's lovely - my olive green room is in the eaves, the sitting room has huge picture windows and the furniture is simple. The air is clearer up here and so am I.

Back to the Beagle

Back in Ushuaia I have started to notice various things about the city. Firstly it's a bit like San Francisco - its streets swoop down to the sea in rollercoaster curves. Secondly its menfolk are very hairy - they all seem to have swathes of thick black hair. There should be a wig factory here using the offcuts. Thirdly most gardens here are planted with blowsy English roses and pink hollyhocks. I have no idea why. Fourthly though many of the houses are painted different colours - very picturesque - one colour dominates: a kind of colbalt blue. Fifthly there is a scuba diving club here - they must be mad, someone told me the other day I'd last 15 minutes in the water before my heart started palpitating dangerously. Sixthly there are lots of back-to-school shops with notebooks and satchels but I haven't seen a school yet. And lastly - for now - there are penguins EVERYWHERE. Not the real thing but small china ones, chocolate and meringue ones, wooden ones (?), penguin statues on the harbour and rather creepily, huge human-sized ones used as shop dummies... It's a penguintastic town.

Impressive

The minibus that took me to Rio Grande and brought me back was small but newish and comfortable. Brilliantly, when you go to the bus company office to book/buy your ticket you're asked where you want to be picked up from - the bus drives round town collecting people from THEIR OWN HOUSES. And then on the way back you're asked where you want to be dropped off - ANYWHERE YOU LIKE. I can't tell you how much this impressed me.

Little things.

Rio Grande, cowboy town

Tierra del Fuego is mostly farming country, principally sheep pastures. It has three towns - Ushuaia, Tolhuin (which is beside a large lake and where Fueguinos go on holiday) and Rio Grande.

I went to visit a friend of a friend - clearly you wouldn't go to sight-see. Rio Grande is the Slough of Argentina - a new town created to create jobs. It's a large dusty town built on a grid bisected by Avenida Belgrano (yes, yawn, I was asked about Margaret Thatcher. I said she was nearly dead and mad now), full of factories and workers from other parts of the country given tax incentives to come and live there.

It may describe itself as the International Capital of the Trout (apparently the trout fishing on the river is world-class and there is a large silvery statue of the fish at the entrance to the town) but its most impressive feature is its flatness. It's flat, flat, flat. I got very lost walking around its flat streets, each one a mixture of shipping containers, derelict wasteground and hut houses - some wooden, others made of concrete but all small. There are several places to have a drink, none appealing and lots of forlorn corner shops selling fizzy drinks and crunchy snacks. It has a beach - a long strip of muddy black sand - and a museum which I didn't go to. There's no greenery and nothing pretty - the town bleeds out to the horizon with vast plains of yellow scrub. If there were cacti and a saloon bar and horses it'd be like a cowboy town.

Rio Grande ought to be depressing but actually it isn't. The locals, many of them immigrants from Bolivia or Paraguay, are friendly and relaxed, hanging out on the streets to chat and laugh together. And the sky above is enormous.

I stayed two days and then returned back to Ushuaia. I still have to go on the World's End train. And the routemaster bus, painted in the colours of the Argentine flag (basically light blue) which takes tourists round town. I haven't visited either of three museums or either of the two Irish bars - I fancy Galway over Dublin. Much to do and promises to keep before I sleep.

Voyage of the Beagle

Many years after Charles Darwin did it and thousands of excited tourists too, I went on a boat along the Beagle Channel. The boat was a glossy gin palace with rows of comfortable seats inside, trilingual crew and a small bar dispensing nasty coffee and nice biscuits. It was packed - I went outside and upstairs where there was a small VIP lounge and sat on the deck.

Even though the spirit of adventure has gone now with a dozen tour operators offering similar trips in Ushuaia and the tourist pier lined with shiny boats, it was a mesmering ride. The sun came out and the dark blue waters of the sea were glinting and calm. Either side of the narrow strip of the channel rise up low green hills and towering white mountains - some Argentinian, some Chilean. We stopped at Bird Island which was covered in cormorants and sea lions basking on the rocks - the air stank with choking, rancid bird shit and a hundred cameras whirred and zoomed and clicked.

When we reached Penguin Island the cameras went into overdrive and the obliging but slightly world weary penguins posed in cute positions. Some waddled into the water. Those birds swim like fishes! They shot underwater and streaked through the sea.

Our last stop was Estancia Harberton, founded by a British missionary. Its a very picturesque farm, set right on the sea, surrounded by beech woods and grassy lawns. Our guide told us lots of interesting stuff in garbled English - the farm is 50,000 acres big, it used to be a sheep ranch, it took a month to round them all up to be sheared, some stayed on a island and the horses used to gather them had to swim across.. We returned to Ushuaia via 'flag trees' - blown by the wind into flag shapes, a hidden lake (which wasn't) and a place where Argentina's head musher breeds huskies and practises for the big Alaskan dog sled race.

I was exhausted by all the animal watching - the birds! the penguins! the sheep! the dogs! but had to run from our bus to catch another - yes, I'm moving on.

Mountains and the sea

The day after I´d arrived in Ushuaia I walked and walked for miles. No doubt about it, the city has a fantastic setting - above it, rising up at the end of every street are huge snow covered mountains and where it runs out, the clear waters of the Beagle Channel. The buildings are a raggedy collection of triangular wooden huts and Communist concrete blocks, like a Romanian ski resort. Huge cargo boats loom over the port, sharing the harbour with day-tripper catamarans and large cruise ships.
I ended my day in Bar La Barra. Next to me four Russian sailors clipped the ends of their cigars with a pair of orange handled kitchen scissors. After chatting over my drinks with the owner, I left them to it, their table piled high in beer bottles and pizza.

I have found other bars too - one called Galway and another Dublin - including a chic live music venue which was empty and a cafe/wine bar with interesting historical artefacts strung around the room and a local árty´clientele. I could get to like this place. At least I can get a drink - and the red wine is delicious.

Last stop Ushuaia

I´d heard that flying into Ushuaia was a spectacular way to arrive and so it was. We flew over milky blue lakes, a huge wall of jagged glaciars and the Magellan Straits. Ushuaia is the capital of the largest island of many that make up Tierra del Fuego and it has a very strange airport. It looks like the wooden frame of an enormous ski chalet without internal walls or decoration, a giant hut or garden shed in fact.
My taxi driver drove me round a few hotels - all booked up - and then dumped me outside the Tourist Office. In the pouring rain I dragged my suitcase up the steep streets of the town to find a very ordinary hotel with no guests, a very dangerous gas fire and a lumpy bed. It´s a bloody long way to come to be disappointed.
Soaking wet, having tramped around, past endless cafes with piles of sticky cakes and shops selling outdoor gear, I found consolation in a small fast food joint with a friendly owner who was squashed into a corner booth with three fat friends and lots of wine. La Barra, it´s called and I decided then and there that it would be my very own Cheers, a place where, when city streets seem lonely, everyone knows your name. Or something.

To the ends of the earth

Yesterday morning I left my lovely hotel to fly all the way down Argentina to Usuaia, capital of the islands of Tierra del Fuego which are South America's and the world's - most southern point. Next stop Antartica (though not for me - it's incredibly expensive to tour the ice).
As we drove through the streets of Buenos Aires I saw a little of the city I'd missed the night before. If only I'd turned right instead of left the night before I would have found a friendly looking pizza joint, little neighbourhood bars, leafy streets.. Instead of which I ran down a ramshackle highway with people huddling in the rain and the only point of interest a quaint corner shop selling home-made pasta in ribboned cardboard boxes. And then as we drew up to the domestic airport I saw the muddy mighty waters of the Rio Plata which separates Argentina and Uruguay - it's vast! You can't see the other side. The river's edge was fringed with rickety wooden piers, ferry boats and colourful kiosks selling hot snacks and cold drinks.
And now the adventure really begins.. At the check-in desk I discovered that I'd gone to the wrong airport - not my fault, that of the travel agent - and was now in a race against the clock. Luckily my taxi driver was simultaneously appalled - "what a mess! ring your travel agent now' he shouted, proffering me his phone - and all too ready to put his foot down. As we weaved through the traffic he told me about his home in the countryside, his childless aunts feeding him up on home-made pasta and home cured chorizo when he drops by and his collection of tame foxes.
Anyway with good fortune on my back I made the plane.

Buenos Aires in the rain

Things have changed. I'm no longer a backpacker - I am, instead, (albeit briefly ie for one night only) a flashpacker.
Previously this is what would have happened yesterday: arriving in Buenos Aires after a long night flight I would have emerged into Argentina with a shabby rucksack and a vacant look and headed for the overcrowded bus into town. Or the cheap collectivo taxi rank - and then squabbled over the fare. Orientating myself roughly and badly with a guidebook map I would have wandered in the rain through city streets, in and out of cheap hostels until I found something not covered in grime or dead insects. Exhausted I would have collapsed on a thin broken bed and traipsed down the corridor to the shared bathroom, to stand under a dribble of cold water. Etc etc. The last time I travelled in Latin America I spent my first night in downtown San Salvador - quite possibly the roughest place I've ever been - in a hotel 'room' with no lock on the door, a flickering striplight and a row of growling men hanging out downstairs by the 'reception'.
Well look at me now! I was met as I emerged from customs, with my smart wheelie suitcase, by a fat cheerful taxista called Julio and driven to a restored town house in chic barrio Palermo, a hotel so cool that there's no name on the door. My room has a huge bed with a cushion mountain and parquet flooring. I have wireless internet and a white towelling robe and antique furniture.
BTW I can't say what Buenos Aires is like - it was raining stair-rods all afternoon and evening. I ran round the block to the cashpoint and dashed back. It just looked like a city grey, dripping and damp.

Here I go again

Tomorrow evening, Tuesday 3 March 2009, I'm flying to Buenos Aires in Argentina. I'll be travelling round the country and on to Uruguay, Paraguay and then Brazil. Five months away, up rivers and down coasts, overland and through the air, across rainforests, mountains, glaciars and plains. In the icy cold of Patagonia, the still heat of Asuncion and the dripping humidity of the Amazon.

This, sometimes, is my job. Mine is not a hard life. It's a sweet one.