Ushuaia
The trees are telling us that the wind freely reigns in this part of the world with temperatures in their "August month" as high during the day of low 40's, but it always feels colder than that. We arrived yesterday in a tiny airport with a chalet type building, where we found one luggage carousel hugged by 200 passengers peering at the shoot for luggage that did not come. After a seeming eternity 5 to 10 bags ever so often appears and of course ours showed up last. On a positive note we found the lady with our name on a sign and were safely and expeditiously delivered to our Hosteria (B&B) by cab. The broken English speaking Pablo was planting flowers in his backyard to bring some color to his tree filled lot, but after that he brought us to an adequate looking overheated room on the street level. God be praised no stair luggage lugging this time. Later we found out that on our request, they could turn off the heat per room and a seemingly stuck window could be opened after all, so all is well for my heat distributing sweetheart. Our host took us to the top level of the house into a type of glassed in "widow walk", where we took in, in awe, our 360 degree surroundings, which are in one word: majestic. Walking down a steep hill means struggling up a steep hill, which was our reconnaissance tour and lunch appointment with local food, predominantly fish, despite the carne reputation of Argentina. The main drag of town, where all the action is, is 4 blocks down the hill at Avenida San Martin, where people like us roam dressed for the weather. 60 to 70,000 people reside in this "end of the world" town, making their living of cruise ships and back packers and fishing. Everything that is consumed here, is brought in, because I do not think any cow or horse wishes to live and die here, only humans are that crazy. Ok, there may be goats and sheep in limited numbers around here,living in, for them penal colony circumstances.
Today, February 20 we are awaiting a 4x4 vehicle that will take us off roading, so stay tuned.
Well we met 6 other people and a driver guide who took us north to 2 large lakes, which our land-rover found via trails of mud and driving through the lake water, sometimes dipping its tires all the way in, distributing water on our floorboards. Did you know that land rovers walk them selves down or up difficult trails, a fact shown by our driver, as he stepped out of the running car with some tape, to close of some intakes against possible water intrusion, walking besides our land rover, which continued its climb up without a driver to the squeal of some females, my sweetheart excluded as is a land rover owner. Our company consisted of an international mix in age and nationality, although most were seniors from the UK, Israel, Brazil and Italy. We ended up at a lake edged cabin where our guide barbecued us a meal of sausage and steak intensely watched over by two red foxes and some large local birds. The weather was good, that means almost no wind and the company congenial and we felt alone in paradise with several bottles of wine, before returning to the only "civilization" around: our Hosteria.
February 21 we have a private trip organized to the national park for some trekking with Norbe a naturalist and some lake canoeing with a guy whose name I forgot, who did most of the peddling, to eventually land at the finish of the pan American highway at its most southern end. Here you could turn around and drive back to Alaska some 12,000 miles. We learned many new things about trees and mosses, lichen and rock formations, as well as about the early tribes, the Yahama's, who inhabited this part of the world living without clothes, because wet clothing is colder than no clothing. They found that finding food by hunting or collecting mussels and blubber rich sea mammals were their main food staple so they were in wet conditions often. Thus they found, that smearing the captured blubber fat all over them, gave them protection against the intemperate weather conditions.
These and other snippets were today's mental food.
Tomorrow is boarding time and for twelve days no Internet, thus no blogs till we reach Ushuaia again. Also my profound apology that I cannot organize my pictures among the text on my iPad. They now become your "connect the picture with the text puzzle" exercise. I will use the next 12 days to solve this problem.
Today, February 20 we are awaiting a 4x4 vehicle that will take us off roading, so stay tuned.
Well we met 6 other people and a driver guide who took us north to 2 large lakes, which our land-rover found via trails of mud and driving through the lake water, sometimes dipping its tires all the way in, distributing water on our floorboards. Did you know that land rovers walk them selves down or up difficult trails, a fact shown by our driver, as he stepped out of the running car with some tape, to close of some intakes against possible water intrusion, walking besides our land rover, which continued its climb up without a driver to the squeal of some females, my sweetheart excluded as is a land rover owner. Our company consisted of an international mix in age and nationality, although most were seniors from the UK, Israel, Brazil and Italy. We ended up at a lake edged cabin where our guide barbecued us a meal of sausage and steak intensely watched over by two red foxes and some large local birds. The weather was good, that means almost no wind and the company congenial and we felt alone in paradise with several bottles of wine, before returning to the only "civilization" around: our Hosteria.
February 21 we have a private trip organized to the national park for some trekking with Norbe a naturalist and some lake canoeing with a guy whose name I forgot, who did most of the peddling, to eventually land at the finish of the pan American highway at its most southern end. Here you could turn around and drive back to Alaska some 12,000 miles. We learned many new things about trees and mosses, lichen and rock formations, as well as about the early tribes, the Yahama's, who inhabited this part of the world living without clothes, because wet clothing is colder than no clothing. They found that finding food by hunting or collecting mussels and blubber rich sea mammals were their main food staple so they were in wet conditions often. Thus they found, that smearing the captured blubber fat all over them, gave them protection against the intemperate weather conditions.
These and other snippets were today's mental food.
Tomorrow is boarding time and for twelve days no Internet, thus no blogs till we reach Ushuaia again. Also my profound apology that I cannot organize my pictures among the text on my iPad. They now become your "connect the picture with the text puzzle" exercise. I will use the next 12 days to solve this problem.
Comments
Post a Comment