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.