The Last Hope and The End of The World

Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world. A setting off point for the fortunate few who have the means to fund an Antarctica voyage or a penguin tour, it is quite a beautiful little city perched on the hillside at the feet of the Martial Mountains looking out over the Beagle Channel. Needless to say, it’s fricken freezing here and blowing an absolute gale at the best of times, but we thought we’d make the effort to venture all the way down here if not for the sole reason to say “we’ve been there”.

We flew into Ushuaia from Buenos Aires and were met with stunning views of snow covered mountains out the plane window. Rachael was giddy with excitement to finally be getting our first glimpse of the Andes in all its glory, and I was stoked to finally be this far south, in what I was sure would be a very special part of the world.

The city itself was a weird mix of expensive hiking stores, bad restaurants and very uninformative museums, but it also had some better aspects. The best of which included the tiny town square which was constantly blasting typical Argentine folk music, and was home to several permanent food trucks. I bought a few choripans and a few beers from ‘El D10s del Sandwich’, which is a play on words that both translates to ‘The Gods of The Sandwich’ in English, and also references Argentina’s Diego Maradona who played soccer with a number 10 on his back, and is basically the football god of Argentina. The food truck was covered in photos and artwork of Maradona, and it wouldn’t be the first of it’s kind we’d see in Argentina, turns out they’re quite obsessed with the bloke. The square would also play host on a Friday or Saturday night to live music and a dozen or so people dancing what I think is called ‘Zamba’, a typical Argentine folk dance.

Down at the water and along the docks there were lots of enormous seagulls, petrels and a species of bird hilariously named ‘Rock Shag’. I was scouring the skies our whole time in Ushuaia to catch a glimpse of an Albatross, but it must have been the wrong time of year. We did see a cool new falcon called the Southern Crested Caracara a few times, which always seemed pretty comfortable strutting around tourists.

We hiked up to see Martial Glacier through the snow, which was often times knee deep, but never actually got to see the glacier because it was completely buried in snow. Instead we got to see an incredible lookout through the mountains down at the city, the Beagle Chanel and the Chilean Andes on the horizon.

We caught a very expensive bus into Tierra Del Fuego National Park and went on a a few different walks around the different lagoons that connect the Beagle Channel with Lago Roca in the north. It was cool walking along the edge of the lake and looking up at the cliff faces that belong to Chile across the water. We saw a few new species of ducks and geese, as well as the Southern Crested Caracara. We did miss our bus however, and only made the last one back into town due to the kindness of a different bus operator who let us ride for free!

We also walked the 10km return hike to Laguna Esmerelda, which was definitely the pick of the bunch down in Ushuaia. We traversed rickety and half submerged boardwalks through never ending rivers of mud to reach a glacial lake which was mostly frozen, and sat beneath a ring of snow covered mountains. I obviously skipped a tonne of rocks on the lake, and I saw my first condor here, which I got way too excited about as I didn’t realise at the time how common they became further north, but it was still very very cool to see and I couldn’t wipe the dumb smile from my face.

We met a really cool Aussie bloke on this hike that was finishing up his 14 month trip through Eastern Europe, Central and South America, and it was great to hear his stories and get recommendations on places we need to visit as we head north. Funnily enough, Todd is from Melbourne, but most of his family live in Jervis Bay, small world! Rachael and I wound down with a few beers at the Irish pub in town, before heading to a restaurant that was recommended by our Airbnb host, which was quite average but probably the cheapest food in town.

Speaking of which, we stayed in a nice shared Airbnb maybe 15 minutes up the hill from the centre of town. Our host, Monica, was lovely and very accomodating despite my very basic Spanish, and we had the guest half of the house entirely to ourselves. Monica’s family is super into European handball, and in their garage/gym they had an absolute haul of massive trophies on show. I think her house can host up to 6 people, and it would have been far less enjoyable if I had to share the kitchen with anyone. I actually spent a LONG time in that kitchen, firstly because all the restaurants down here are crazy expensive, and secondly because after we finished those three hikes, we realised that there was literally nothing for us to do in town, so I did a lot of cooking. Now that I’ve finished my nice introduction to Ushuaia, after Rachael’s polite request, I’m going to be more honest about what I think of the southernmost city in the world.

While the following may be a bit harsh, I honestly felt this way at the time of writing. It’s only after revisiting the photos that I remembered we did actually do some cool things here, but we just overstayed our welcome. My initial draft of this blog post was something like this:

Our time in Ushuaia was one of the most boring experiences of my entire life. Ideally, we would have spent two days absolute max down here, if we were still dumb enough to even visit at all. We spent a grand total of TWELVE DAYS at the literal end of the world, where I fell into a deep, dark place of endless scrolling while my body slowly succumbed to a sedentary lifestyle. We decided to wait out our time here before starting our big hike in Torres del Paine, rather than waiting a little further north in the much smaller towns of Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales, but in hindsight that may have been the wrong call. Now we know that we shouldn’t book anything more than a few days in advance just in case we don’t love a place, so that’s a good lesson learnt!

The phrase ‘End of the World’ here is used as an advertising slogan by just about every business in town. ‘The train to the end of the world’, ‘pizza from the end of the world’, ‘hostel at the end of the world’, and ‘freshly caught crustaceans from the icy waters of the end of the world’ are just a few real life examples of how locals try to put a positive spin on Ushuaia’s worst quality – its location. I’m not joking, don’t come here. I think once upon a time when it wasn’t so expensive to go on a penguin tour, or get a decent feed then maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad to spend a bit of time at ‘the worst city at the end of the world’, but after paying ONE HUNDRED australian dollars to get on a bus and do a few hours worth of walking in the national park, then having to pay another hundred bucks on ‘the worst food from the end of the world’ for dinner, you can sort of see why this place left such a bitter taste in my mouth. The hikes were okay, but nothing compared to what we’d eventually see further north, and half the national park was closed because there was still too much snow on the trails. We didn’t even do a penguin tour, I think they wanted like $600 from us for a half day tour or something insane to see a few penguins. It was here at the end of the world where I learnt to justify our spending in quite a handy way. Would I rather spend $600 to head out on a boat in the rain and howling wind to see a handful of penguins standing on a rock from fifty metres away, or would I rather six hundred $1.00 tacos in Mexico? Get the hot sauce ready boys!

The best part of our time in Ushuaia was when I posted on the Couchsurfing app that I “want to get beers”, and met an Argentine from Salta at the Irish pub for a few cold ones. Marcelo was a really nice guy, he works as a tour guide in Ushuaia (why do bad things happen to good people?) and he helped me a lot with my Spanish. It was great to make a new friend, he and I still keep in touch! When I walked out the door at about 6:30pm, I told Rachael I’d probably be back around 11, but I wasn’t promising anything. I think I stumbled back through the door close to 3am, it was a great night! 

I actually made one of the best stews of my life in our shared kitchen in Ushuaia. I spent pretty much a whole day buying ingredients and cooking, which isn’t too dissimilar to a rainy Sunday back home, except for the fact that I don’t have to fly to the end of the world whenever I want to make something tasty for dinner. I can’t really say too much more about Ushuaia, one because it pains me to think of it, and two because I’m actively trying to erase the majority these twelve days from my brain. The Choripan stand in the town square was great though.

I’d never been so excited to catch a bus in my entire life as I was when we were leaving Ushuaia and crossing the border into Chile. We were delayed for a very long time at the ferry to take us over the Beagle Channel because the wind was too insane, but we eventually got across after maybe a two hour delay. We went through immigration at the Argentine/Chilean border a few hours up the road, where the bus driver unloaded everyones stowed luggage so it could be scanned. While waiting on the bus after finishing up in Chilean customs, the bus driver walked up the steps with my backpack and yelled down the aisle “WHO’S IS THIS?”. The sniffer dogs had sniffed their way over to my pack and sat down next to it, apparently deciding that it contained something tasty. I had to walk back into customs with my pack and answer a bunch of questions to the best of my ability in Spanish, and try to reassure them that I wasn’t trying to bring any food across the border. They didn’t believe me so I had to unpack my entire backpack; all my camping gear, clothes, cooking equipment, spices, snorkel! When they eventually couldn’t find anything they sent me on my merry way and I was left to wonder why they were so convinced I was some sort of tasty treat smuggler. Eventually it clicked. A few months prior, Rachael and I went on a three day test hike down the NSW south coast, and I’d chopped up a good deal of salami and stored it in a zip lock bag to add to our pasta for dinner. Unfortunately, the overwhelming aroma of half a kilo of diced salami sweltering in my pack for a few days hadn’t quite subsided by the time we were crossing the border into Chile, and I think the sniffer dog understandably got a bit too excited about the lingering stench. Once I realised, we had a good laugh. It was a hilarious way to enter Chile.

Next stop PUNTA ARENAS! Hot tip – do not come here. We stayed in the magical hostel by the name ‘Backpacker’s Paradise’, which was magical in the way that it was truly remarkable that this place even functioned as a business. It seemed to be run by a prospectless kid who just had all his mates over to play video games all night. Even from the street it looked like it was about to crumble, and I have no idea how it managed to stay standing during the absolutely relentless winds that we had during our stay. Upon giving us a tour of the hostel, with a perfectly deadpan expression he pointed at the absolute bomb of a kitchen which you could barely make out through the mountain of dirty dishes and said “please keep everything clean and tidy”. They were his dishes! There was no one else here!! 

We spent a day walking around this hell hole, which seemed to be built to support a thriving community, but instead played host to Rachael and I, and a few other sad tourists who were no doubt questioning their choices and wondering why such misfortune had befell them. From memory, I think I even said out loud “oh god, take me back to Ushuaia” which shows the true desperation we were faced with here. If I can take one positive away from our brief time in this truly depressing city, it would be that now we have a solid contender for the shittest place in South America, and no matter how bad things get in the future, we will always be able to say “Hey, at least we’re not in Punta Arenas.”

After two very long weeks we finally made it to a town that didn’t make me want to go back to work and chip rocks all day. Puerto Natales actually had a bit life and character which was a very welcome change from the absolute graveyards that we’d just come from, with a few cool bars, borderline enjoyable restaurants and a very nice hostel by the name of ‘Hostel Last Hope’, a sort of fitting name considering where we both were mentally by this point in the trip. Similar to ‘… at the end of the world’, ‘Last Hope’ was another advertising slogan used by businesses here in Puerto Natales, probably due to the amount of tourists who arrive after enduring the southernmost part of the continent with the only remaining emotions intact being sadness and despair. In a way, Puerto Natales may truly be the ‘Last Hope’, or the last ditch effort to keep backpackers from catching the first flight home because South America “just isn’t for them”. 

Diego, the hostel owner, was a bloody legend and was full of recommendations and advice about the area. He recommended us to visit the local gin distillery ‘Last Hope Gin Distillery’, which was run by an Aussie dude who was hilarious. We did a free tour where he showed us how gin was made and we got to try a whole lot of raw ingredients they use in their gin and we also enjoyed a few cocktails. We went on a good hike where we climbed a small mountain and got up close to two Condors, one of which landed only a few metres away from us, and we had maybe ten minutes to take photos of these very impressive big old birds. A condor’s wingspan can reach up to 3.3 metres, and while the two that we saw atop this mountain weren’t quite that big, it was truly remarkable to watch them jump from the cliff’s edge, take flight and soar in the wind while we were at eye level with them

We moved accommodation prior to the start of our hike in Torres del Paine, just so we could have our own space to unpack everything and organise our packs. We stayed with a lovely couple called Jaqueline and Fernando, who had kids our age that were away somewhere else studying, and they were so accommodating and friendly. They were super interested in our travels and wanted to know about Australia, and it was a really good way to practice our Spanish. Upon first arriving, I think we spoke for a few hours, completely in Spanish, which was really fun, and they spoke very very slowly so that I could understand most of what they were saying. 

I think if I’d known what the far south of the continent was like prior to coming here, I’d certainly rather put my money towards infinitely more tacos in Mexico. But, I am glad we made the effort to start at the bottom. In every way, the trip has only been getting better and better. The further north we go, it’s warmer, cheaper, the food is improving, there is more culture and happier people, there is more stuff to do and the days in which I feel even an inkling of boredom are now practically non-existent. Our time in Ushuaia was a good lesson in not booking too far in advance, and our time in Punta Arenas serves as a  reminder that just because you’re living the dream and backpacking through South America, there are still places you will turn up that truly suck, and that’s okay.