Earth of Fire

Which is roughly what Tierra del Fuego translates to. So about 40 hours by bus out of Bariloche, and a night spent in Rio Gallegos which is really a town only worth going to on your way through and I`m at the end of it. Ushuaia billed as the ¨The Southern Most City in the World¨ is full of cattle, eagles and other birds, foxes, guanaco (a relative of the llama), beautiful views and ice capped mountains. Durring the quietest part of low season there are very few people down here. The city can probably only really be called that when its full. A lot of bars and hotels sit closed for lack of tourism, meaning even the seasonal residents have long since gone. It´s blisteringly quiet, so one thing about the long bus ride I`m grateful for is allowing me to meet a bunch of the small group of tourists that were going to be down here with me. We actually had a good group out til late last night, including 2 french guys, 2 portugese, an English, an Irish and a guy from Brazil. It`s actually nice that this kind of mix happens so often while travelling, you get used to the different accents and laughing at the the small things, often bits of the humor, that get lost in translation (which of course makes it all the better to be able to laugh at it). Unfortunately you also get used to the ephemeral friendships, as soon you start getting comfortable enough in them to fully enjoy them, one, both or all of you are on your way, most often in different directions. The two french guys, Baptista and Emmanuel, turned out to be really cool. We went hiking the first day up to see the Marshall Glacier not knowing that it would be covered in snow. Still a good day hiking through the snow which when bad choices were made sometimes came up to mid thigh. The next two days we rented a car, which between the three of us it was pretty cheap. The first we went out to the national park, quiet enough that most often we were the only people on the trails. The second we made it out to Cabo San Pablo where there`s a shipwerch on the beach that you can walk out to on low tides. The Desdemona was still in good enough shape to convince Baptista and I to try and cross a small stream in order to get to her. I don`t know what serious lack of judgement allowed us to think that taking off out shoes to cross a stream on the furthest south land mass other than antartica to be a good idea but it did. This was honestly the single most stupid decision I`ve ever made. Which says quite a bit. Only being maybe 30 meters wide it felt like it took forever to cross. My feet were completely numb after second of putting them in the water, the second half of the cross, made up of small stones that would have usually hurt, was crossed moving as fast as I could while still keeping my balance. The numbness was quickly passed by onto a pain that felt like it was inside your brain. Emmanuel had planned on doing the same but seeing our faces and hearing our screams kept him out of the water. After reaching the other side and having our shoes and socks back on didn`t stop the pain either, it probably took another half of an hour to get any feeling back what so ever. It took so long to get back any sensation other than pain we honestly both expressed fear of losing toes. If the water hadn`t been moving so fast it would probably have been frozen solid. At about the same time we got to the ship we were able to walk more or less normally. It had a huge whole in the side and you were able to get up into it and walk around, ladders led up two levels to the top deck but the rust was so bad that you could see through the floor in places making walking around up there a slow and nerve racking experience. The image of falling through was so strong a few times I opted to grab something covered in bird shit just to keep a hand on something solid. Frankly the whole experience was a little dulled because of the fear of having to cross through the stream again to get back to the car. Luckily form the deck of the boat you could see a path that looked like it might avoid the problem. It turned out to lead to a road with a bridges that we surely would have found if we had not been so impatient to get to the boat durring low tide and had looked around a bit more with the car. When we finally got back to Emmanuel he was talking to probably the only person living out near the beach. He was an old fisherman and was sporting about a twelve inch blade tucked into the back of his belt. We had parked at and abandoned old hotel and after realizing he was being watched while looking around in it and seeing the blade after starting up a conversation Emmanuel said he really felt for a while he was caught in the middle of a horror flick. Best we can tell though we was just a nice old guy living out there by himself looking for someone to talk to that had a need for a twelve inch blade. Anyway right now, I`m still well hungover, and all the new friends have gone and I`m at the end of a very slow slow day. All I want out of days like these is a bed, a television, and aome crappy movies but that didn`t out. So I thought maybe I`ll just go and write stuff on the internet. But it`s late now and I`m tired, so I`m going to bed. Have a goodnight.