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'.