So we know why Argentina is so safe - they don't need to bother stealing your money in the rest of the country they just need to wait for you to get down here then rob you blind on laundry services. Double the price everywhere else. This has led to some differences among team Stanford. Operative Husband feels that clean pants are an extravagance that can be done without. Operative Wife already had to rewear her pants and refused to do it three days running (you can only turn them inside out once you know) or wash a bin bag's worth of dirty laundry by hand in a bathroom sink. So, chicken stew for us again tonight (and tomorrow).
That aside, we are at the most Southernly City in the World or, as they call it here, at the End of The World (there is a town in Chile called Puerto Williams that is further south but apparently that doesn't count as it's not a city). It felt like the end of the world to get here. Three buses, one "ferry" (think what they used for the Normandy landings and you've about got it - we were thinking Dover-Calais ferries...so naive) across the Magellan Straits, 2 border crossings (Ushuaia is cut off from Argentina by a big bit of Chile) with long dull waits, and a random change of bus, and we finally made it.... Or we could have flown into the airport with the great name of "Aeropuerto Las Malvinas Argentinas".
We have seen the train at the End of The World, and seen a golf course at the End of World and various other "End of" and "The Last" and "xxx at the end of the world". These guys know what their unique selling point is!
But okay, it is AWESOME. Ushuaia is backed by mountains (covered totally in snow still) and sits on the sea, with the Beagle Channel stretching out in front of it, covered in islands.
THE thing to do here is to get a boat out on the Beagle Channel. So we did. In a gale. And a blizzard. And sunshine. And hail. The weather is a bit changeable here... It was great. There's no point describing it as we'll do a poor job and you'll cry with jealousy into your work keyboards and get sacked. We got off on one island into a howling gale and then 20 minutes later were legging it back to the boat in a blizzard. Except Martin who stood on a hillock arms outstretched, like blinkin' Highlander. Even the tour guide left him stood there and got on the boat before him.
We saw an island full of cormorants and one with seal lions and another with a funky little lighthouse (strangely not the lighthouse at the end of the world - that's futher on). All the time our catamaran was leaping up and down. The two Armenian-British women we met almost got blown off the stairs coming down from the top deck. Fortunately we were able to comfort them by allowing them to buy us hot chocolate!
We'll put some photos up when we're not using the internet connection at the end of the world.
Today we got a bus to the National Park of Tierra Del Fuego (the name of this province) and took great pleasure walking alongside a lake for 3km to the Chilean border (marked by some weird metal sculpture and a sign). We did the obligatory photo poses.
Tonight we're going to see what's kicking on a Saturday night at the end of the world. Our hostel seems to be sandwiched between an Irish Pub and a strip club - Operative Wife is being quite strict about which direction we head out of the hostel tonight (Guiness it is then!)
On Monday we make the lovely long bus journey to Puerto Natales in Chile. Really like it down here but hey, we are rolling stones....
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