02 January 2011

I left Ushuaia this morning accompanied by two of the Israelis I met on the Antarctic cruise, Noam and her boyfriend Yam. The Israelis, a Dutch couple, and myself all celebrated New Years at the Israeli’s hostel with a large dinner that took three hours to prepare because it took forever to fry all the schnitzel and potatoes. We didn’t start eating until 11:15 and by the time we were done with desert, which was fruits with chocolate fondue, it was five minutes to midnight. Then someone wanted to go to a club which didn’t open until 2 am and cost 40 pesos to enter. We didn’t find out any of that information until we had already walked over to the club. We walked back to the hostel and played a drinking card game the Dutch girl had concocted. While we were playing someone walked in and informed us that the club actually cost 70 pesos. By this time I was exhausted and not very happy with the way the night was going.  I had expected to have an early dinner and then watch fireworks over the bay but another group in the hostel was using the kitchen before us and we had to wait for them to finish. The fireworks over the bay never materialized anyway and what did show up in the sky were obviously two rescue flares. I did however speak at length with an old Canadian couple who were staying at the hostel.  They had bought a car in Chile and were doing a tour of South America.

We left at 7:30 this morning. I thought we would drive to Rio Gallegos and then up Route 40 to El Calafate but instead we drove straight to Puerto Natalaes which saved us a lot of time and wear on the car on the unpaved highway between Rio Gallegos and El Calafate. Part of the road runs right along the Strait of Magellan and it occurred to me all of a sudden that this is the very edge of the South American continent. Ushuaia may be the world’s southernmost city, the end of the world, but it’s on an island, Tierra del Fuego. Here I was driving along the most extreme edge of the continent.

Noam had rice left over from dinner last night and we ate that for lunch after we exited the ferry from Tierra del Fuego. The police in Rio Grande were handing out huge yellow gift bags filled with a safety DVD, a bottle of water, a condom, an air freshener shaped like Bart Simpson, a folder for your papers, and a box of orange juice. We drank the orange juice with the rice. Only it wasn’t orange juice. It was a soy protein drink with orange juice flavour.

This cloud is like an meteor

Because I’m going to Torres del Paine, Noam and Yam went looking for a bus ticket to El Calafate for the morning. They found one that happened to be leaving at just that moment so we, Yam and I, ran back to the hostel where we had dropped all our things to retrieve their large packs. Hugs, salutations, and they were gone forever.

I went grocery shopping and saw another of the Israelis from Antarctica. He said everyone was at a hostel across town and I should come over. I was very tired and told him maybe. At a restaurant called La Picado de Carlitos, across from the hostel, I ordered a hamburgesa completa. It is so huge it came with a knife and fork. Yam had told me they had large cheap burgers here.  I didn’t count on this monster.

Very large burger

I’m excited and relieved to be on my own again.