Early Departure

I spend my last day in Ushuaia in rest. I send out postcards and do a little reading and relax for the challenging Torres Del Paine circuit. When I tell Luca, the Italian, cigarillo smoking proprietor, I’m leaving, he says "finally! I thought you were living here."


The hostel is still noisy when I try to get some early sleep. I’m in for a restless night. The Irish woman on the lower bunk has an early bus into Rio Gallegos. At my request, she nudges me awake at 4:30 AM. I eat my remaining fruit, since it cannot come with me across the border to Chile, and walk down the street already glowing in first morning light.


I board the bus with a large group of mostly Germans and a few French for another 15 hour journey. We ride the ferry once again and file through customs. It soon becomes apparent that we are running too late to make the connecting bus. An Israeli girl with a nose ring walks to the front of the bus to inquire and she comes back with a dubious answer. The head of a German tour group goes to the front to ask more questions. We are dropped off at a police checkpoint outside of Punto Arenas where we will be picked up by the connecting bus.


We stand along the side of the road in the coming dusk and wait. The bus arrives and we are shuttled into a rainy Puerto Natales. I walk to the popular Erratic Rock Hostel and have a bad feeling about my chances for a room, and alas the gregarious balding Oregonian proprietor confirms that they’re full and points me around the block to another hostel. I walk in on some backpackers eating dinner and they tell me to shout "Omar!" The beds are lined with plastic and have no sheets, but it’s a place to lay my head. Omar tells me his home is my home.


I walk to a restaurant where half my bus is by this time eating, as well as one of the bus stewards, an odd, but funny guy who uses mime to communicate. I eat salmon and an avocado salad and pay 4300 pesos for it, which could be $100 for all I know about the Chilean exchange rate (Note: about $8). Nevertheless I pay it and return to the hostel for glorious sleep.

Canon de las Ovejas

The bus to Pto Natales leaves on Wednesday. Today’s Monday so I decide to explore the last of the trails that originate in Ushuaia. I weave my way through the omnipresent schoolchildren who just completed the trail. The way goes along a stripped railbed which transitions into a muddy pasture road. This leads to a waterfall. I cross a beautiful, marshy, sloping horse pasture with bogs and stands on dead trees and fallen logs against a backdrop of craggy peaks.

This is the start, a sign indicates, canon de las ovejas, so intrigued I follow the pasture road into a valley surrounded by tall peaks and towards a snowy range in the distance at the end of a stream. I climb a ladder over the pasture fence and find markers for a trail. It gently slopes up into the forest paralleling the stream through more swampy terrain. The way turns sharply downhill and then out of the woods for good and onto a sizeable scree slope. The trail then follows narrow banks in the scree undulating up the slope until it finally continues up the valley again, where I want to go.

The yellow markers guide me across the exposed slope intermittently through bushes across more scree and over steep slopes of lingering snow. I dig my boots into the snow hoping I don’t slide into oblivion. My boots, after drying in the past day, are soaked once again.

I reach the range with small glaciers clinging to the rockface and narrowing to thin waterfalls cascading down the cliffs into the canyon. One large scoop of snow has fallen off one of the glaciers causing a big scar in the glacier. The trail winds up to a pass and I cross some snow to the top.

It was getting late, 7pm, as I retrace my steps through the horse pasture. The horse eyes stare at me either out of curiosity or malice, but not wishing to test the correct interpretation I step gingerly past them. I make it back to Cruz del Sur at 9, dinner is in full swing, but I manage to cook and eat a decent meal for once.

No Direction

I eat a long breakfast, chat a bit with Mia, then I take off down the road in search of Valle de las Ovejas. As I go down the highway I come to another town, this one more intensely industrial than Ushuaia with cargo crates piled along the shore, more barges and less frills. I cross a bridge over a river and check my map and turn around and pick up the road I missed. I walk by cabanas and homes, horsefarms and a nursery with greenhouses. Roads with no names, no signs spur out everywhere and my map fails to give specifics so I continue on faith, which isn’t often reliable. The road narrows and becomes deeply rutted. I pass a perro cuidado sign and the dogs in question track me down. A sheep dog shoots me a wary look and his cohort slinks underneath a gate and they cut me off and start growling. This convinces me I’m going the wrong way.


The next way I try seems wrong as well, so I acknowledge defeat and turn around. I settle in at the hostel finding lunch and starting Moby Dick. Mia comes back, not to thrilled with TDF, or Ushuaia, a cynic if there ever was one. She' s disappointed in the lack of beavers, of all things. I let her read my journal, as I promised the day before, and I continue reading. She leaves to fly back to the north of Argentina and suddenly I’ve lost my entertainment in Ushuaia.

Two Paths

I head towards the top of town not quite sure where I’m going but I manage to guess my way there and I find the Glaciar Martial trailhead, and I have another muddy, boggy yet beautiful trail to myself. I cross a road and see the chairlift to the top. But chairlifts are for skiing. The way gets steeper and muddier and then emerges from the woods, crosses a stream and leads past a refugio based at the top of the chairlift.

I skip across logs and rocks to cross a bog. A young American couple complain, "Why did we come this way? Because we’re stupid, that’s why." The crowded snout of the glacier is populated with everyone from old Argentinian couples to European backpackers and American tourists. I walk across the well trodden glacier and continue up a steep trail with loose stone. And the way becomes noticeably chilly and windy.

After a long slog, I cross a couple more rocky hills and some snowfields to face a bowl of craggy mountains. A girl gazing off one of the hilltops turns around and motions to me. She’s used up her batteries, she explains to me in Spanish, and she wants to borrow mine. She snaps a few pictures and tells me MUCHisimo gracias and offers me her trail mix. I lunch on the vista before turning back toward warmer climes. On the way back the trail I encounter a Norwegian couple I noticed on the bus to Ushuaia. She gives me a cute smile while her boyfriend grunts out a hello.

There’s a lot of daylight remaining when I reach the road so I walk towards another trail further east. I pass through meadows and enter the woods once again, climbing and feeling the fatigue starting to settle in. But I press on compelled by the curiosity of where the trail will end.

I surpass the treeline and cross some deep snow. I’m chilled and rain showers start falling. I set a deadline for 6:30 and keep moving finally spotting a sign for a laguna. I lose the trail so I point myself towards a saddle and cross the mossy talus.

The laguna is slushy and nearly frozen over even as it approaches summer. I turn around and follow the stream back down, having lost the trail hopelessly this time. As I hop dead trees and push through vines and bogs, I’m still not sure, so following the stream is still my surest bet. Once the way becomes too treacherous, I climb up the ravine and search for the trail in earnest, and I find it fairly easily.

I make it back, a 26 km day, and eat whatever’s left in my pack for dinner. In my dorm an Israeli girl, Mia, comes in and immediately talks about her adventure around South America. She makes me laugh so I’m happy to listen.

A ride home

I decide to hike to Tierra del Fuego 20 km away. Its spitting rain and I layer clothing, this time, pull on gloves and a hat not wanting to get caught off guard by the weather. A group of backpackers in front of me try to hitch their way to the park, unsuccessful the whole time they’re in my sight. Beautiful snow covered crags and horse farms line the muddy dirt road along the way. I pass by the Tren fin del Mundo, that looks like an amusement park ride, that shuttles back and forth to the park.

I sidetrack onto a trail and down a mossy, muddy, ferny, boggy hill full of roots and clover, a nice switch after a month or so of desert environment. I walk to the lake and down a muddy path and I have the place nearly to myself passing a tour group on occasion, or a backpacker couple. The drizzle continues, but I’m walking briskly and I keep warm. At the end of the lake trail I pick up a road to a campsite and look for batteries for my exhausted camera at the confiteria, to no avail. I eat my lunch at a picnic table.

Now 27 km into my day, I continue down another trail and climb a mountain stepping up slippery footholds and muddy slopes that slide beneath my soles. My feet sink into bogs and saturated moss. The four kilometer trail seems much further. I finally cross a mud pit alongside a small stream to another mossy bog. Snow and crags are all that’s ahead of me. I can’t resist climbing, but its getting late, even for me, and my day is eclipsing 30 km. The summit appears elusive so I turn around knowing I’m setting myself up for a dark walk home, but at least not in the wilderness.

At km 35 a young man in a transporte van asks me "a Ushuaia?" He insists, "suba." and I get in. He asks others, along the way, the same question, so I assume he’s collecting fares. He sings along to the latin faux Brittany on the radio and shows me points of interest along the way. We dodge a swooping hawk in pursuit of a rat or a rabbit, he says.

He lets me off in front of my hostel, my small noisy hostel, and when I ask him the fare, he plainly states "nada." I thank him profusely. This leaves me time to drop off laundry.

Fifty hours to El Fin del Mundo

I start a fifty hour journey on an old bus sparely supplied with a liter of water and weak, sugary, coffee. The steward hands us each a packet of Maty’s cookies with a psychotic looking clown pictured on the front. I find out that the dull, coastal, oil town of Rivadavia is my layover of eight hours until my next bus to equally bland Rio Gallegos, my second stop on the way to Ushuaia. It’s a blustery Patagonic spring day with snow flurries. To pass the time, I surf the net and go to a café and a pizzeria. The espresso doesn’t even dent my fatigue.


The bus to Rio Gallegos is almost an hour late, and we cross the desolate beauty that is Patagonia. We arrive at an hour late, as well, 5am, but this works out for the better. The next bus to Ushuaia is not until 9am. I rush through the cold and into the bus station with its sheet metal that makes it as inviting as a warehouse, but its gloriously warm and I snooze in fits and starts. Other travelers, as buses arrive, do the same, and the whole place has the feel of an emergency shelter. A whole line of backpackers are splayed out napping atop their bags on the floor.


The boleterias start opening at 8am and I go in search of a ticket to Ushuaia. They’re sold out, at least the company I first try, and I’m sunk, until I find their competition the next booth over. The bus leaves in an hour.


Another eleven hours and no food on this bus as well. We go through Argentine, Chilean, Argentine and then Chilean customs once again. Our bags and passports are scrutinized for the small strip of Chile we happen to be passing through. We reach the ferry on an extremely windy day and the bay is whipped into a frenzy of whitecaps. Once our bus pulls onto the ferry, several people get off to explore the boat. We have to brace ourselves on the deck in order not to fall over and into the drink. I’ve had my fill of storminess and get back into the bus. Out on the water, waves of spray wash over the eight foot sides of the boat and inundate the entire bus.


We are squarely in Argentina and the Andes reemerge in the horizon. Lakes and snow filled craggy peaks pass by the window, and then there is snow on the ground. We descend into the beautiful, if no longer so much frontier town of Ushuaia in the light of 9pm. I check into the Cruz del Sur hostel, shower and eat and sleep with great anticipation.