Round the World Chelle: The End of the World

December 1, 2011

The tour literally ended at the end of the world. Okay, maybe not literally the end of the world, but the last stop, Ushuaia, is the southernmost city in the world. And, to get there, we had to cross the Strait of Magellan. In one of the novels I read with my students a boy sails on a boat passing through the “dangerous” Strait of Magellan, and because of that, I think I have some strange fascination with it.

Our ferry

Spray on the boat

Merko and Jane soaked after spending
time on the deck. The water was rough.

We crossed into Tierra del Fuego on a ferry and continued on with a long day of driving. We stopped that night right on the border of Chile and Argentina so we could cross it first thing in the morning. The town consisted of the hotel with the campground and a gas station. Several in the group decided to upgrade to the hotel as it was freezing and windy. As I had a little Spanish and no one at the hotel spoke English, I became in charge of helping organize the rooms. (It was much more difficult than one would expect it to be.) For my services, the lady let me use the hotel showers free of charge, which was fantastic. (“Shhh…Don’t tell anyone!”)

The town where we spent the night.
The whole town.

Eating dinner inside Gus. Too cold outside.

The next day we crossed back into Argentina and arrived at the End of the World by midday. We toured the national park there that afternoon, heard about possible excursions for the following day, and went out to dinner to celebrate the last night of the trip. Deciding on the excursions was difficult for me. The ladies from the hostel strongly recommended going on a boat ride where you would see the lighthouse, a cormorant island, a sea lion island, and a penguin island. The other option that caught my attention was taking a bus and then a short boat ride to an island where the penguins actually were. After much deliberation, I decided on going to walk with the penguins. Unfortunately, the trip was completely booked, so I settled for the boat ride.

Part of the Tierra del Fuego National Park.

A view from the park.

I am here.

The following morning when I went for the boat ride, I learned that the penguin part of the trip had been canceled due to bad weather. Disappointed, I decided that I’d prefer to spend time around the city rather than taking the partial boat ride before leaving for Buenos Aires that evening.

City museum. As close as I'm
going to get to penguins?

They're so cute!

Adorning the town Christmas tree.

Around noon I went to double check the departure time of my flight that evening. I was on the same flight as two other people from the trip, but they had received notices of changes in departure time while I hadn’t. Well, I went to check my reservation, and it turned out I actually didn’t have one. In my email inbox I had a confirmation of my reservation, but not a confirmation of my flight. Oops. Need to learn to read the fine print more carefully. This added considerably to the tasks I needed to accomplish that day, namely figuring out how I was going to get to Buenos Aires and where I was going to stay in the meantime.

In the end, I found accommodation in a fabulous hostel with a view of the sea and I was able to book a flight for the following night. The silver lining was that I also had another chance to see the penguins I was excited about. Once again, I was too late to book a walk with the penguins, but I was able to get on a boat tour for the next morning.

The boat trip was nice; the penguins were fantastic. I think I got a bit lucky, too, as the weather was fine for us to sail the couple hours to make it to the island, but the weather turned and we actually were bussed back to the port because they felt the water was unsafe for us to sail in.