Ciao ciao Ushuaia

I spent my last day in Ushuaia in my favourite bar, drinking beer and then wine. I liked everything about it - its smallness, its good simple food, its cheap drinks, its rock music, its staff - I even became matey with the cook/cleaner, a worn-out looking Peruvian woman who always smiled when I came in (well it was usually just me and her of the fairer sex) and generally kept the men around her in order. I liked the drunk reprobate customers - particularly the good-time girl who'd seen better days but was still squeezing herself in besides the guys and one who looked just like Fagin with a long matted beard, huge hollow eyes and a floor length leather coat. The fat genial owner, Daniel (a musician manque), refused any money for my final drinks, gave me his card and two kisses when I finally dragged myself away - normally it's just the one in Argentina. He knows a good customer when he sees one though it's hard to imagine I'll ever be back... Actually La Barra didn't seem very Argentinian at all, it reminded me of the sort of dives I used to love in old Soho.

But there was a break in the drinking day - I went to visit a friend of a friend at her house on the outskirts of town. The helpful woman in the tourist office dug under her desk, pulled out a huge map of Ushuaia (I now have 4 different kinds according to each different mission) and showed me where to go. So off I set. It was a huge surprise. Above the main road out of town, high up on a ridge reached by a wooden staircase, is Barrio Ecologico, a quiet suburb set in woodland. It was like jumping into Hansel and Gretel - I couldn't believe it. Little wooden houses with porches and chimneys puffing out blue smoke, surrounded by trees and flower gardens and streams and grassy pastures - I wandered along, peering over fences and grinning with delight. Nelva's house was as impossibly fairytale as the rest and she was just right for the part. A small animated woman with extravagant speech and gestures (es un divino! he's divine - she said several times about different people), she demonstrated to me the art of mate, the Argentinian tea ceremony. Hot water - not quite boiling - is poured over bitter leaves into a little silver pot or hollowed-out gourd (the mate) and is drunk through through an embossed metal straw. Passing round the mate - each person drinks a full pot - is part of the ceremony and the ceremony is the point of mate, Nelva told me. It really is just like tea in Britain, only more so. I can't say I liked it but then who likes tea for the first taste? Anyway mate is everywhere in Argentina - I've seen people drinking it in offices, shops, queueing for the bank..