Ushuaia, located at the end of the world on the island Tierra del Fuego, is everything I hoped it would be. Getting here was not without its bumps though. Actually the term clusterf%#k comes to mind. I hadn´t been in my seat for more than five minutes when a guy came up to me and told me I was in his seat. We compared tickets and realized that we were both assigned to the same seat. The bus driver said that the numbers weren´t important and to sit wherever there was space. This is what I told the woman at the next pick-up when she told me I was in her seat. This arrangment worked well until we stopped at the final pick-up and there were two people waiting for the one seat left on the bus.
The driver went down the aisle asking everyone for their ticket and name. When he got to me I gave him my ticket, but was unable to find my name on the list. After a heated discussion, in which I told him that I had bought my ticket on Saturday and refused to wait another minute, I grudgingly agreed to sit in front with the driver. I later learned from the driver´s assistant that there were two more people who weren´t on the list (and passengers who were on the list and not on the bus). I ended up sharing the very uncomfortable front seat with them.
The road to the border was unpaved and very rough. A girl a couple of rows ahead of me threw up all over the aisle. After the border, though, the road was smooth and scenic, winding along the Atlantic coast and through some spectacular mountains all the way to Ushuaia. Ushuaia is surrounded by these mountains on one side and by the Beagle Channel on the other. That, combined with the colorful swiss cottages, combines to make a very charming town.
I spent my first day in Ushuaia at the National Park. It was not what I had envisioned, but still had some really beautiful lakes surrounded by colorful peat moss, milky green lagunas, and impressive mountains. My favorite though was the beaver dam. I loved the juxtaposition of the naked trees in the dammed lake and the surrounding greenery.
The next day I went sailing on the Beagle Channel. It was a beautiful, sunny day. Neither words or photos can adequately capture how truly magnificent the scenery was. The guide explained that a melting glacier formed the channel, which connects the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Where the glacier passed, the land eroded to a lopsided bump shape. These islands, which are covered with colorful peat moss, contrast sharply with the jagged mountains that surround the channel and are reflected in its waters.
We started our tour at the lighthouse at the end of the world and ended at Bridges Island, where the Yamanas (nomadic indigineous tribe) made one of their stops. Every island in between seemed to have a specific inhabitant: rock cormorans, one-haired sea lions, two-haired sea lions, and king cormorans. I was especially amused by the two-haired sea lions. The one-haired were frolicking in the water and wiggling about on the island. The two-haired´s, however, were lazing in the sun. It is no wonder though. The males, who were not present on the island, have a harem of females to impregnate. They spend the rest of their time fishing and playing. The females, on the other hand, are pregnant 360 days a year. They mate within five days after giving birth and continue to feed their pup during the pregnancy.
My last day in Ushuaia was my first experience with an Argentian prison. Don´t worry, I didn´t get arrested. One of the most famous museums in South America is the maritime/prison museum in Ushuaia. Before Ushuaia was a naval base and long before it was a tourist destination, it was a penal colony. Now the maritime museum is located in the old prison building, which is huge. It was funny how the exhibits changed from cell to cell from a maritime exhibit to a jail exhibit, you never knew which one you would get.
As luck would have it, there was also a Salvador Dali exhibit at the same time. It was fantastic. It had a couple of his better known paintings (Gala Looking Out the Window, which, when viewed from a distance, looks like Abraham Lincoln and the Levitating Crucifix), but I was much more excited about the lesser-known collections such as the Tarot Cards and Casanova paintings. Most fascinating was a three-series of paintings that look like¨typical¨surreal paintings, a fly or a landscape, but when you place a reflective cylinder in the center of the painting, the painting is transformed into a jester or a nude lady. How did he do that?
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