November 16
We met Ignacio and Maria promptly at 9:30 and walked a few blocks to meet Wang, a Taiwanese Argentine shipping agent. She is like a snap of the fingers. Ignacio, Maria, Ernesto and I can’t keep up with her. After an hour at her office, where there were lots of copies, we went down to the Port of Ushuaia. There was some talking with aduanas and Ernie and I gave lots of firmas (signatures). We piled into Wang’s tiny Toyota and drove to a notary (and she is an awful driver). Everyone broke from 1-3 (siesta…) and then at 3:30 we were back at Wang’s, then back to the notary, then back to our hotel where a truck was waiting to load up the motos. The truck had no ramp; three strong men dead lifted them. We were racing the clock to get to the shipping facility before closing time. This was clearly not Wang’s first rodeo as she brought cookies for the workers at the shipping yard (two points Wang). The strong men unloaded the motos off the truck and then shipping workers pushed them off into the distance. We have our own TEU that will be leaving Ushuaia 28 November, arriving to USAmerica in ~60 days. Wow. Phew. Sigh.
Gracias por todo Ignacio. You stressed me out big time, but you really are a sweet young man and we wish you and Maria the best.
November 17
Today was the first day of the motorcycle rally. It is called “Latitude 54 Sur”. Since we don’t have motos and neither one of us like crowds, we decided we would rather go the national park than the rally. So we spent the day at Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego. Mostly we wanted to take the “Tren del Fin del Mundo”, because who doesn’t want to take a train ride at the end of the world? Well, turns out it was more like the linear go-cart at the end of the world. It went slower than one could walk, and it was the width of a loveseat. Luckily Ernesto and I got in a cabin that had window seats and a little aisle and not one of the cabins that crammed in three seats across. We made one stop for a waterfall and everyone piled out and marched up to it like ants. Ernesto and I felt pretty silly. Ah, all in good fun. We did learn some things about the history of the prison there, which is why the train exists in the first place. It transported the prisoners to and from the prison and the forest everyday, where their one and only job was to chop down trees. The entire valley floor still has the evidence of their logging; the short stumps were cut in summer and the tall stumps were cut in winter. The prison was shut down in 1947 (there were 600 prisoners then) but it was converted into a military base and they still used it to fill water tanks and move goods. An earthquake made it unusable in 1949, and I think it sat until the 1990’s when the fixed it up for tourists. I was glad to read (upon researching when I got back to our apart hotel) that the tiny ~20” tracks were not the original size; the train was originally ~3’ 3”. This is still smaller than a standard train track (which are over 4’ apart), but hopefully wide enough that prisoners did not feel they were in a go cart.
After the train we got back in the van and went a few kilometers before stopping again, this time for a “trek” (a.k.a., a very slow walk down a developed path). At the top was a nice view of Bahia Lapataia (Lapataia Bay), or the last bay of Argentina. The walk down led right to the other famous “end of the world” sign. It doesn’t actually say “the end of the world”, but it does designate the end of Ruta 3, which is technically the last highway of the PanAmerican highway route. I asked Ernesto if he wanted a picture and he said it didn’t mean much to him because we didn’t ride our motos there. Aww. I tried to repay a little good karma when a couple two-up on a moto rode up and wanted pictures in front of the sign; not only did I take pictures of them with their camera and both their cell phones, but I was the asshole telling people to get out of the way.
As we walked back to the van after our “trek” Ernesto and I stopped to admire a Honda TransAlp. The owner showed up and we briefly chatted. After that chat, the tour guide and I had a chat (who like the penguin tour, is a young hottie). She asked me if we rode motos. I said si. She asked if we rode motos in Argentina. I said si. She asked how long our trip was and I said five months. She looked very surprised. Then she asked where were started and I said Oregon (she knew we were from Oregon). She said, “no, not where are you from, but where did you start your moto trip?”. I said with a smile, “Oregon”. Her jaw dropped and she went on for a minute making a fuss about it. Ten minutes later when we were back on the move in the van she was giving her spiel about the PanAmerican. At the end she told the whole van about us, ha! They turned and stared and smiled and it made Ernesto uncomfortable. It was really adorable (both Ernesto and the tour guide’s shout out).
One of the coolest sights of the day was Darwin’s fungus, a bright orange ball shaped fungus that is parasitic on the genus of beech trees that lives in the park. About the size of a golf ball, they are the fruiting bodies and when “ripe” they fall to the ground, get eaten by the rodents, and pooped out somewhere else and hopefully they find a new beech tree to prey on.
Entonces, we ate a huge lunch and took our final stroll through town. Tomorrow we fly out of Ushuaia. We were going to fly straight home, but we had two issues. First, all northbound flights out of Ushuaia go through Buenos Aires, which has two airports: one national and one international. These airports are 45 km apart and there is no shuttle that connects them while remaining as a checked-in passenger, so we would have to get our baggage, go through customs, travel to the other airport, check in, etc. We decided it wasn’t worth the stress of a few hour layover and we gave to ourselves a full day in Buenos Aires. The second issue was that our renters have been fantastic and they want to stay until Dec 1st. With some time in between Buenos Aires and our renters departure, we may or may not have booked ten days in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.
We met Ignacio and Maria promptly at 9:30 and walked a few blocks to meet Wang, a Taiwanese Argentine shipping agent. She is like a snap of the fingers. Ignacio, Maria, Ernesto and I can’t keep up with her. After an hour at her office, where there were lots of copies, we went down to the Port of Ushuaia. There was some talking with aduanas and Ernie and I gave lots of firmas (signatures). We piled into Wang’s tiny Toyota and drove to a notary (and she is an awful driver). Everyone broke from 1-3 (siesta…) and then at 3:30 we were back at Wang’s, then back to the notary, then back to our hotel where a truck was waiting to load up the motos. The truck had no ramp; three strong men dead lifted them. We were racing the clock to get to the shipping facility before closing time. This was clearly not Wang’s first rodeo as she brought cookies for the workers at the shipping yard (two points Wang). The strong men unloaded the motos off the truck and then shipping workers pushed them off into the distance. We have our own TEU that will be leaving Ushuaia 28 November, arriving to USAmerica in ~60 days. Wow. Phew. Sigh.
Gracias por todo Ignacio. You stressed me out big time, but you really are a sweet young man and we wish you and Maria the best.
November 17
Today was the first day of the motorcycle rally. It is called “Latitude 54 Sur”. Since we don’t have motos and neither one of us like crowds, we decided we would rather go the national park than the rally. So we spent the day at Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego. Mostly we wanted to take the “Tren del Fin del Mundo”, because who doesn’t want to take a train ride at the end of the world? Well, turns out it was more like the linear go-cart at the end of the world. It went slower than one could walk, and it was the width of a loveseat. Luckily Ernesto and I got in a cabin that had window seats and a little aisle and not one of the cabins that crammed in three seats across. We made one stop for a waterfall and everyone piled out and marched up to it like ants. Ernesto and I felt pretty silly. Ah, all in good fun. We did learn some things about the history of the prison there, which is why the train exists in the first place. It transported the prisoners to and from the prison and the forest everyday, where their one and only job was to chop down trees. The entire valley floor still has the evidence of their logging; the short stumps were cut in summer and the tall stumps were cut in winter. The prison was shut down in 1947 (there were 600 prisoners then) but it was converted into a military base and they still used it to fill water tanks and move goods. An earthquake made it unusable in 1949, and I think it sat until the 1990’s when the fixed it up for tourists. I was glad to read (upon researching when I got back to our apart hotel) that the tiny ~20” tracks were not the original size; the train was originally ~3’ 3”. This is still smaller than a standard train track (which are over 4’ apart), but hopefully wide enough that prisoners did not feel they were in a go cart.
After the train we got back in the van and went a few kilometers before stopping again, this time for a “trek” (a.k.a., a very slow walk down a developed path). At the top was a nice view of Bahia Lapataia (Lapataia Bay), or the last bay of Argentina. The walk down led right to the other famous “end of the world” sign. It doesn’t actually say “the end of the world”, but it does designate the end of Ruta 3, which is technically the last highway of the PanAmerican highway route. I asked Ernesto if he wanted a picture and he said it didn’t mean much to him because we didn’t ride our motos there. Aww. I tried to repay a little good karma when a couple two-up on a moto rode up and wanted pictures in front of the sign; not only did I take pictures of them with their camera and both their cell phones, but I was the asshole telling people to get out of the way.
As we walked back to the van after our “trek” Ernesto and I stopped to admire a Honda TransAlp. The owner showed up and we briefly chatted. After that chat, the tour guide and I had a chat (who like the penguin tour, is a young hottie). She asked me if we rode motos. I said si. She asked if we rode motos in Argentina. I said si. She asked how long our trip was and I said five months. She looked very surprised. Then she asked where were started and I said Oregon (she knew we were from Oregon). She said, “no, not where are you from, but where did you start your moto trip?”. I said with a smile, “Oregon”. Her jaw dropped and she went on for a minute making a fuss about it. Ten minutes later when we were back on the move in the van she was giving her spiel about the PanAmerican. At the end she told the whole van about us, ha! They turned and stared and smiled and it made Ernesto uncomfortable. It was really adorable (both Ernesto and the tour guide’s shout out).
One of the coolest sights of the day was Darwin’s fungus, a bright orange ball shaped fungus that is parasitic on the genus of beech trees that lives in the park. About the size of a golf ball, they are the fruiting bodies and when “ripe” they fall to the ground, get eaten by the rodents, and pooped out somewhere else and hopefully they find a new beech tree to prey on.
Entonces, we ate a huge lunch and took our final stroll through town. Tomorrow we fly out of Ushuaia. We were going to fly straight home, but we had two issues. First, all northbound flights out of Ushuaia go through Buenos Aires, which has two airports: one national and one international. These airports are 45 km apart and there is no shuttle that connects them while remaining as a checked-in passenger, so we would have to get our baggage, go through customs, travel to the other airport, check in, etc. We decided it wasn’t worth the stress of a few hour layover and we gave to ourselves a full day in Buenos Aires. The second issue was that our renters have been fantastic and they want to stay until Dec 1st. With some time in between Buenos Aires and our renters departure, we may or may not have booked ten days in Playa del Carmen, Mexico.