Ushuaia Awesomeness

Well, I’m officially a horrible blogger, especially when I have catching up to do. Hopefully I can get all of that done today, in more than one post for the ease of my readers. :) I’m enjoying being back in the northern hemisphere but missing Argentina. Communicating with people is maybe a little too easy now – none of this “Let’s play charades so we can try to understand each other!” Anyways, right now, I’m sitting outside on the patio with my computer, watching Dudley sitting on Dharma because the ground is hard. Oh, Dudley.


We got to Ushuaia on June 21 without any incidents (except that Jeremy had lost his luggage on the way to Buenos Aires and it had not yet arrived in B.A.) and got moved into our bed and breakfast type place. We had a living room, where the two couches were beds as well, a kitchen, and a bedroom with two twin beds. We even got to make breakfast and various other foods! After getting moved in, we went to check out the town.


We got in somewhere between 1 and 2 in the afternoon, so though places were still open, they were trying to close for siesta. We found an eating establishment that wasn’t closed yet, and the guys were able to get a huge plate of meat. There was actually a window through to the “kitchen,” where they had a very large fire with lots of meat roasting over it. It could have made me ill if I had a weaker stomach. The rest of the day was basically spent getting ourselves oriented in the town – it seems like we did lots of that on this trip, which is cool for us, but not so much for you, Dear Reader.


On the 22nd (a Tuesday) we set up our excursion for the next day (which I’m not going to spoil), and then we grabbed a taxi to take up the hill to a nearby ski resort that was opening in the next couple of days. We hung out at the base, and I petted a dog or two while watching people hike up the bunny hill and board down. We decided to try to find some of the trails on a map (even though these trails are designed for summer hiking), and started hiking up the main slope. We got to one of the higher chalets and stopped to take pictures for a while, then Jeremy and I headed back down, and Russ and Steven went up quite a bit further. That night I was still pretty beat from the 15 hour time difference, so I went to sleep, and Jeremy’s luggage showed up at the airport. They wouldn’t bring it to him, however, so he had to walk to the airport. Russ was kind enough to go with him. (They COULD have taken a taxi… though I do think they took one back.)
This is how I dealt with the cold. It's called "Layered Jenise"



The excursion we had planned for the 23rd (Wednesday) was 4X4, snowshoeing, and dogsledding!!! The 4X4 part of the trip took up most of our time – we got stuck three times and had to get out so they could winch out the Land Rover. It was rather epic. We even drove in a lake, and on the shore of the lake “Oh, snap, there’s a tree on the ‘road’ or usual path we take right next to the lake. I guess we’ll just have to go around it, into the lake.” We did this for a long while, and everyone was quite impressed with the state of our stuckness, except for the last time, when it was just because the ruts were too deep to actually drive in. So we were just chillin there. The snowshoeing was entertaining, and it felt good to get out of the Land Rover and walk for a bit. The boys wound up having a rather extensive snowball fight, and I wound up getting pushed into and covered with snow.The sled dogs are some of the craziest dogs I’ve seen. They’re all super-super thin because they burn so many calories every day, and they all LOVE to run. When they know someone’s taking that sled out they all go crazy, like they’re shouting, “Pick me!!!! Pick ME!!!!”

The last day in Ushuaia was spent shopping for souvenirs and (on Jeremy’s part) working. Later we flew out to El Calafate, our next stop in Patagonia.