18 Feb­ru­ary — 22 Feb­ru­ary 2005

I Made It!!

My long — 3:40 hour — flight from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia started at 6 a.m., so I was up and out of bed at 4 a.m., taxi at 4:30 and checkin at 5. On my flight from Lima to Cusco, I had some of the most beau­ti­ful scenery I have ever seen, look­ing at the moun­tain which were oh so close. On this flight, mainly I got clouds. But land­ing in Ushuaia was beau­ti­ful, if a lit­tle bit tur­bu­lent. The sky was clear and you could see the moun­tains in the dis­tance. Very nice. I get a taxi into the city, and the first hotel I picked is full. I notice they had wifi access, so I asked if I could check my e-mail and they obliged. I walked to another hotel, which ended up being rather nice. How­ever they only have rooms for two nights, but it’s good for now.

It is a lovely city — very pros­per­ous, and pretty touristy. Not as bad as Paratai in Brazil, but touristy. Even though it is on the oppo­site ends of the earth, it reminds me of Alaska. The weather is sim­i­lar, the peo­ple are sim­i­lar (if bet­ter look­ing and bet­ter dressed) and the infra­struc­ture is approx­i­mately the same (which I would expect, given the sim­i­lar weather.) It’s a small town, but with most of the things you would want — elec­tron­ics (cheaper than Brazil), inter­net access, bank­ing, good restau­rants, plenty of hotels, etc.

My first day I didn’t do too much — I was oper­at­ing on about four hours of sleep. One of the first things I did see was a cou­ple of guys on Dual Sport bikes, includ­ing the man­li­est of motor­cy­cles — the 1150 GS. They were doing exactly what I had hoped to do — but then again they had Argen­tinean plates, so it’s a lot eas­ier. Bas­tards. I resisted my urge to start a fight (not speak­ing span­ish finally came in handy.) I found a tourist office, and mapped out the things I want to do while I am here — see the National Park, go on a boat and see some seals, find an angry man­age­ment class, etc. I had a late lunch at an Argen­tinean steak house and then back to the hotel for a short nap. For din­ner I went to the restau­rant next door to the hotel with wifi, and was able to get online. I had a small, not very good salad, a great half bot­tle of wine (they gen­er­ally don’t sell wine by the glass any­where I have been, but instead sell half bot­tles of wine — 375ml) and a great slice of choco­late cake. This was a frilly, pink restau­rant with lots of sal­ads and fish on the menu, and I was the only guy there.

The next day I got up and went hik­ing. The national park is close — 12 KM, so I took a taxi to the entrance. It was expen­sive at 39 Pesos, but I got there quick, and didn’t have to fig­ure out where to get a bus. The trail was quite nice, and very well marked. Luck­ily I didn’t run into any other peo­ple while I was on the trail, but when I got to the top, there were two ger­man girls talk­ing loudly. Ger­man is such a beau­ti­ful lan­guage, at least com­pared to Klin­gon. The views were great, but I hate to say it, but it reminded me of Alaska, but with­out the con­stant threat of being eaten by a bear.

On my way down, away from the Ger­mans, I saw a really cool beaver dam. I have seem beavers try and make a dam next to my office in Both­ell, but the city always removed the trees. This time the beavers had full run of the place. There were dams that were five or six fee high, hold­ing up a lot of water. It was very very inter­est­ing, at least to me. Regret­fully I’ve actu­ally never seen a beaver in the wild, but I’m get­ting closer. I went back to the main road, and waited for a bus to pick me up. It was sub­stan­tially cheaper at 8 pesos to get back.

That night I was look­ing for a place for din­ner, and ran into the cou­ple (Mac and Kath­leen) I sat next to on the plane. They invited me to sit with them, and we had a very nice con­ver­sa­tion, and an aver­age din­ner. Appar­ently Mac has a huge love of sta­tis­tics, and among his other tal­ents, can name the heights of most larger peaks in the world. He had Mount Rainer pegged at 14,000 ft, which is almost exactly cor­rect. I was impressed, espe­cially since Rainer is pretty far down the list of largest peaks. As I have a lot of use­less knowl­edge too, we had a lot to talk about. The next day they invited me to go sail­ing with them. Since it was some­thing I had been want­ing to do, I said “sure.”

The next day I had to change hotel rooms, so I got up pretty early and packed, and went back to the first hotel I tried to stay in — the one with wifi. I’m glad I didn’t stay there the entire time, since it is some­what expen­sive, but it was sup­posed to be nice. How­ever, it is nowhere near as nice as the cheaper hotel I was stay­ing in. Every­thing is just a small bit worse. Noth­ing is hor­ri­ble, but it’s all just slightly dif­fer­ent in a bad way. With inter­net access, I will for­give them. Oddly enough, as I have got­ten fur­ther south, the hotels have got­ten more expen­sive. I think the most inter­est­ing part is that it’s an almost lin­ear progression.

After get­ting moved, I was sup­posed to meet my new friends at 8:50 a.m., and the boat was to leave at 9 a.m. (so I thought, and so the woman sell­ing me the tick­ets said.) At 9 a.m., they weren’t there, but I wanted to go sail­ing, so I got a ticket on another boat. Of course, the boats didn’t leave until 9:30, and by then, they showed up, but I had a dif­fer­ent boat. Oh well. The cruise was nice, and we saw some pretty cools stuff. We saw two dif­fer­ent types of seals, and some cor­morants, but no pen­guins. One of the seal colonies (?) we went to, the seals fol­lowed our boat for quite a while, jump­ing out of the water often. It was beau­ti­ful, and luck­ily I got a video of it. I tried to get pic­tures, but it’s hard to antic­i­pate when they jump, and there is shut­ter lag on most non-SLR dig­i­tal cam­eras. The view of the city, and of the moun­tains from the sound was beau­ti­ful. The day was clear and just a lit­tle bit chilly (I think the weather is approx­i­mately the same as it is in Seat­tle now.) At the cor­morant nest­ing site, we saw one of the baby cor­morants being eaten by another, larger bird. It wasn’t pretty, but I did get a pic­ture. We then went to another, more bor­ing, seal colony, walked for a while on an island, and headed back to the city. It was a very nice time, and a bar­gain at 90 pesos ($34.)

Now that I’m here, at the end of my jour­ney, it dawned on me. I made it — I fuck­ing made it to the end of the world. There was a great sat­is­fac­tion walk­ing the streets of this town and enjoy­ing the thought I was here. Even now, three days in Ushuaia, I get a smile on my face when I think about it. There are some things I would like to be dif­fer­ent (more pho­tos and my SLR), and a lot of stuff I still want to see (San­ti­ago, more of Argentina, more Brazil­ian Biki­nis, and more hik­ing in Patag­o­nia), but I made it.

The flip side to that is that now I need to start think­ing about going back. You know the cliche “this is the first day of the rest of your life.” Well, I guess it’s always true, but never more so than here and now. It’s over — on Thurs­day I’ll be back in Seat­tle, look­ing for a place to live, and a job, and all the other things that I want out of life. It’s a pretty big change over the last year of my life, and even over the last cou­ple of years. I’ve got a lot of work to do. Finan­cially I have set myself back quite a bit (I’m glad that Grandma Redd isn’t here to see it — my spend­ing this much money, and not work­ing for a year might have killed her), and I’m going to have to work really hard to get back to where I was, and even harder to get back to where I want to be. I’ve got rela­tion­ships to fig­ure out, stom­achs to flat­ten, houses to buy, ten­ants to deal with, cho­les­terol to lower, motor­cy­cles to sell, and more. Whew!!