Down at the end of the world.

AKA The end of the world

Hitchhiking. It can be wonderful, full of adventure feelings, new people, restoring your faith in humanity and beautiful landscapes you wouldn't see from a plane or wouldn't pay attention to from a bus. And mates with strangers, to the horror of the not-argentinians, who can't help but think about the germs...

But there's also a downside -other than the bad drivers, who you can also get on a bus; ask anyone who's been to Valparaiso- and this downside is the lack of time to book anything in advance.

Usually, you know (and by know I mean hope) you'll be in X place only the day before you arrive, which means you usually get stressed trying to find a decent place to sleep, and many times get stuck with the worst option (have you seen our beautiful brick wall views?)...

The morning we started hitching to Ushuaia we had a hard time trying to find internet to book a hostel. It was high summer, which means heaps of tourists and a serious lack of accomodation.

High summer also means chochos (favorite flowers)

We ended up booking in one of the places with the worst hostelworld rating, which in the end was not that bad. It had pretty comfortable beds, lockers in the rooms and a good location. The bathrooms were gross, though, and very unpractical. I wish we were blog-famous so we could influence the hostels to be aware of things like putting seats in bathrooms. Or cleaning them every now and then.

But anyway, in the end all we wanted was a good base to explore and this was it, so it was OK.

Ushuaia is a very pretty city-town, built at the foot of the mountain and overlooking the ocean. All around there are high peaks permanently covered in snow, which was a welcome change of scenery after the vast Patagonian desert.

Ushuaia in a very patriotic shot

Snowy mountains and high-class hotels.

 There are a couple of things that give the city its character: the cute wooden constructions, the port, the adventure-tourism-oriented everything, the penguin-themed everything, and the old-prison-themed everything.

Beautiful old ship next to the port.

"English pirate ships' mooring is forbidden"

Hippie penguin

 The Ushuaia prison was a high security jail that worked in the early 1900 and hosted some horrible characters, including "El petiso orejudo" (the short big-eared guy), one of Argentina's most notorious serial killers. You can see representations of the famous convicts everywhere, which is as interesting as it is disturbing, especially if you read some about El petiso orejudo. I'll leave this link here.

The creepy and horrible Petiso orejudo, and other famous convicts of the
"Penal de Ushuaia"

Convicts escape while the policemen gossip about the neighbours.

Me and a serious statue at the prison museum. I'm a bit afraid of looking into
my bearded friend's identity, so his name is a mystery.

Besides the cold, strong wind with Antarctica flavour, we had fun in Ushuaia. We got our passports stamped with a smug "End of the world" stamp, we took advantage of the insane amount of daylight, we had beautiful pizzas in a cute little family restaurant, and hot chocolate at the most crowded chocolate place I've seen.

Double decker Ushuaia bus

The mandatory picture.

Chey's container company.

Another mandatory picture.

This is at 10 PM. AT NIGHT.

Interesting street art.

Q: How smart do you need to be to pose with one of this funny things?

A: Smarter than me.

We also did the navigation of the Beagle Canal, which turned out to be the most beautiful experience of those 4 days. But we have MILLIONS of pictures of that, so it'll go in the next post.

Bonus: me and the most loving husky in the world.

Bonus II: Chey and the loving husky.
Notice how he steps on Chey's foot!