Ushuia

After our short BA visit we were off to Ushuia – way way down south. This is the scene on our way from the airport ot the hostel – My homesickness for BC quickly evaporated on this part of the trip. Ushuia was like a very rural, very remote very tiny backwoods version of Vancouver – Mountains on one side, water on the other – and a very laid back atmosphere.

The whole town is situated on a very steep hill, our hostel was a 15 minute near vertical climb from the town centre – many of the streets were so steep the side walks were made of a series of giant stairs

this is taken from the promenade down at the water just to the left there is a little village of vendors selling tickets for boat trips to see penguins and other exciting sites

prototytipcal shot of Ushuia – town is to the left – penguns about two hours to the right.

We climbed up part of that mountain in the background (the top part to see a glacier)


My lovely self in the prototypical shot of Ushuia


las Chicas in Ushuia
a big dead boat sitting in the harbor – kinda spooky



the big national park at “the end of the world.” We spent a day hiking around this gem of a park and exploring in our rented vehicle –




a crazy looking fungus that is destroying all the trees



wheres patricia?

there was a big herd of wild horses, hanging out, and eating, and doing other things…

they did a very good job of mowing the grass

can’t recall the name of this bird – but I think it’s one of the species special to this area


wheres ana?
5954 – My ankle hurt so I stopped in the middle of the deserted forest and waited for Patricia and Luciana finish the hike…

I perched myself up on a big rock and took pictures

I got bored and took a bunch of macro shots of lichens and moss…

Then I got really board and started turning the moss blue with the magic of my digital camera!

This is us at the end of the road – I don’t think you can drive any farther south than this!

It got very cold


Those pesky dandelions know no bounds

fun with shadows!


we ran into a little traffic jam on our way out of the park – this car took the corner a little too fast and almost went down into that rather deep ravine… but luckily a tree caught it!

driving around Uhshuia

moon rise


the next day we decided to climb up to a glacier at the top of this mountain – there was lots of permafrost…

lots of snow…

lots of sore muscles…


but in the end…

no glacier…

but we were cool with that…






and this guy was too.

We met up with our greek friend vasillies for dinner (from the conference in ururgay)


6108 – Lamb was the specialty food around here.

Beer and wine are always special!

The next day we went to see some penguins!
Stopped to check out some sea lions on the way

And some albatross (according to one of the boat crew)


Penguins!


They were very cute, very curious, and could swim amazingly fast!


And then after getting very boat sick on the way home – we got back to land