Ushuaia

Our arrival into Ushuaia was pretty spectacular, with mountains around all sides of the Harbour. We were taken to our hostel by the waiting touts which worked out well. Upon arriving at the hostel I started yarning to a guy whom I had met on the bus in El Calafate, followed by a trip down to the supermarket with a Dutch couple to get stocked for a few days.


The next morning we headed into town to check out prices of tours and to confirm Susan´s ticket with LADE airways for the following day´s flight to BA. Given my foot and the much talk around the hostel about Tierra del Fuego trekking being a bit average and expensive, I decided I would enquire about plane prices also. The tickets are reputed to be in the order of 500 pesos for the 4 hours flight (around 250 NZD), which compare well to the 3 buses required to get to BA at around 450 pesos and 60+ hours! The chap at the LADE counter looked puzzled that Susan would confirm the flight a day before despite the ticket saying so...turns out that confirmation is required a mere few hours before the flight departs, attesting to the unreliable reputation of the airline! The computer was down so we had to return later....


In the mean time we scouted out prices for boat trips in the Beagel Channel and to the Les Eclaireurs lighthouse. We did the rounds of all the tours offering similar 3 hour tours on small 12 person boats (not the huge cats bobbing around) for around the same price of 150 pesos and settled for the company with chilled out operators offering unlimited draft beer on board! A great call!


We did some window shopping in the outdoors shops before returning to LADE. It turned out that Susan´s flight for the following day had one seat left, so on the spot I pulled out the credit card and snatched it up before anyone else got it. It was a sensible decision which kick started my travels north a lot and saved a whole lot of time and effort with the buses.


After a spot of lunch back at the hostel, we made our way back down to the wharf to board our trusty vessel for our tour. Despite the season being too early for penguins, we had other bird life and sea lions to look forward to, not to mention terrific sea views back towards Ushuaia and the surrounding mountains. It was obvious after a few minutes that the best way to see the town is from boat in the harbour, with mountains all around and the airport jutting out into the water on what appears to be a man-made island. The afternoon was spent taking photos of the wildlife, the lighthouse and a short trek on an island in the harbour originally inhabited by indigenous people. We returned to town slightly tired and a little merry after the wines we consumed with a young Scottish couple on the boat.


Ushuaia is pretty low key at night, although there are some great all you can eat restaurants which were a little beyond my budget. We settled for a nice quiet night in the hostel cooking, drinking and being entertained by a singer from Isreal and an eccentric Irish chap singing ´Johnny, Johnny Johnny´in French, which apparently is about a woman pleading with her husband to spank her. Totally hilarious!


The next morning we packed up and headed up the nearby skifield for a short walk into the mountains before the 4pm flight. Practically the entire hostel was on the same flight, which only leaves on Thursdays, Fridays and Mondays. There was a little unrest at the hostel because apparently people had been told that if they wanted to wait at the hostel until the flight a charge of half the room rate would be required. This is pretty terrible and unheard of and people were talking about this plenty. Susan and I started to prepare our lunch and everyone else joined...eventually the hostel owners came around because there were so many of us and they didn´t want to cause any upset – probably a bit late.


Our flight confirmed 2 hours before departure and the hostel emptied out into taxis. We were all very aware of the 15kg luggage limit so were transferring the contents of the packs around. Andrew, the English guy I met in El Calafate, was very worried and had put on two pairs of jeans, a singlet, 2 jerseys and a big fleece - he looked very uncomfortable walking around the airport on what was a pretty warm day!! We weighed our bags at the check-in, mine coming to 14.9kg so pretty good guessing, although I thought it was less. In the end LADE didn´t seem to mind as some of our group checked in bags around 21 kgs!

We left only 30 minutes late on an old Fokker F28 from the mid sixties. The interior was like something out of a Knight Rider movie but it was comfortable enough and we actually got a few reasonable meals. We had an exciting but smooth flight to BA with only one stop at Commodoro Rivadavia. The landing at Commodoro Rivadavia was pretty exciting, with the approach more like that of a Cessna at Ardmore. The pilot joined the runway downwind and undertook a sharp bank of what must have been about 35 degrees completing the near 180 degree turn to level the wings and cut the engines just before touch down!!! It was quite impressive!!


The flight into BA was awesome, with impressive night views as we landed at the domestic airport close to the city. A group of us boarded a local bus from the terminal into town, which is only 4kms away. Susan and I had the BA Stop Hostel booked, which is where I stayed first time into BA. The others hadn´t made a booking and, due to the Argentina vs Uruguay football match, did not get a bed there. They did however find a place down the road, where Susan and I joined them for too much box wine and beer later than night, finally retiring to the hostel around 4am.