I can feel the presence of the lizard.

Adventures in Anthropology




Ushuaia Lighthouse










Hiking to Chile








Boat in the harbor at Ushuaia.



Comorants we saw on our boat trip






We have arrived in Tierra del Fuego after saying farewell to the Villafañe family and hopping on our flight. There are hardly words to describe this place. It`s beauty is overwhelming and the idea of being at the tip of the continent is strange to comprehend. It is one of those places that makes you forget about all the other beautiful things you have seen and makes you think that this MUST be it - that it doesn`t get any better than this. Today we took a boat tour of the Beagle Channel and saw sea lions and commorants and had what we calculated to be a 354 degree view of the Andes Mtns. I learned today that the Andes Mtn. range just falls into the sea here in Ushuaia, the southern most port town in the continent and they reappear occasionally as islands before they officially reappear in Antarctica. WHOA!










We ended up spending a week in Ushuaia. Lucy Page and I went skiing on the second to last day of ski season at the southernmost ski resort in the world. The skiing was awesome in the morning, nicely groomed which allowed us to race down the mountain at breakneck speeds. We were joined for the day by Mikkel, our new Danish friend (who ended up coming with us to El Calafate), and another girl from Holland whose name I couldn`t pronounce then and don`t remember now. One day we decided to go hiking to find a glaciar that was only 7km outside the town... we ended up horribly lost wandering around on cross country skiing trails and then in the middle of a peat bog. And yes, you do sink in peat bogs - but only up to your calves. The next day we decided to take a taxi to the entrance of the glaciar, like the rest of the tourists, and found it very easily. You couldn`t see the glaciar itself because it was covered in snow, but we hiked up it for about 45 minutes and then slid down on our butts all the way to the bottom. We spend a couple of days just hanging out in the city - one day was the birthday of Ushuaia so we got to watch a huge parade downtown and eat choripans on the sidewalk. Choripan is an amazing invention of the Argentines including chorizo (spicy sausage, bread, mustard, and spices). The Argentines are obsessed with two things, Choripan and Mate, which is an herb tea that they drink ALL THE TIME. I think it tastes mildly like horse poo - but Cortney and Lucy Page have grabbed on to the trend and are enjoying it wholeheartedly.

On out last day in Ushuaia, we went to the Parque Nacional del Tierra del Fuego and went on a great hike next to a lake where we eventually ran smack into the Chilean border. The only thing there was a pyramid made out of steel but the book said that if you crossed over the border illegally, there were Chilean border guards hiding in the hills. We didn`t really want to test out our luck and see what they would do to us, so we just turned around. Good thing we had that info though because the park map said nothing about it. I wouldn`t really want to have a Chilean dude dressed in combat boots running at me with a machete.

We made some great friends at our hostel, Freestyle, in the week that we were there. Rasta Max got us free passes to a club one night and Emilio taught us some good card games. Also, we made friends with an Israeli named Omri who played about 20 games of Backgammon (Shish Pish) with Amy and informed us that it was the national game of Israel. You learn new things every day.