Ushuaia - Fin del Mundo | The Shit We Do

After El Calafate and El Chalten we took another long bus ride to Ushaia, the southern most city in the world. Ushuaia is a pain in the ass to get to by bus because you have cross from Argentina into Chile, then take a ferry and then cross from Chile back into Argentina. We had to do the same thing when we left so now half my passport is covered with stamps from Chile and Argentina. When we finally arrived Ushuaia felt exactly as I expected a remote port city to feel like. Its a little cold, feels isolated and only exist for it's access to the southern shipping routes. But it has the title of the southern most city in the world, so it is a big tourist destination. It has a couple of streets with expensive stores, restaurants and hotels. I think the city is really only as big as it is because of tourism.

So like all visitors that go to the End of the World, we went to the prison museum, cruised the Beagle Channel, and hiked in Tierra del Fuego National Park. The museum was the first thing we did in Ushuaia and it was pretty cool because it's a prison that has been converted in to several museums (prison museum, maritime museum, museum about the region, and art gallery). Ushuaia was first settled because England wanted a remote prison colony for their worst criminals. I am not a big fan of museums but I managed to look around for a few hours. Mareen and I left the museum wondering if the prisoners ever thought thousands maybe millions of people will come and see their photos in the future.

After the museum we went on a three hour cruise on the Beagle Channel. The highlights of the cruise are a few small islands with seals and some marine birds. You also get to walk on a small island from which you can see Chile and the Pacific Ocean on one-side and Argentina and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. It's nothing amazing but its there so why not. The final highlight is a lighthouse, which is the southern most lighthouse in the world (do you sense a theme here?). Oh and they also stamp your passport which I thought was a cool souvenir.

The next day we went to Tierra del Fuego National Park. which is a nice park with the some nice trails and wildlife. The highlight for me was all the foxes wondering around the parking lots. This park gets so many visitors that all the wildlife hang around where the people are and scavenge for scrap food. This was strange because you don't see any animals when you are hiking through the forest but when you coming into the parking lot there are animals everywhere (foxes, ducks, geese, and many other birds). Its kind of crazy how much these animals depend on humans.