traveling to ushuaia, argentina is not the easiest thing in the world to do, and especially not by road. it is now possible to fly to the southern most city in the world, but not cheaply and since we are so bus-rific lately we didn`t even really consider it.
we left punta arenas, chile in the morning and were supposed to be in ushuaia about 12 hours later, around 8pm or so.
our bus drove for 2 hours and at 10am the road we were on came to a complete stop… the road literally just runs into the water. the bus stopped there without an explanation and we figured it was just letting us get a look at the strait of magellan and also experience the incredible wind. the buses down here will do that. they`ll stop for someone to take pictures and such. they also stop every few hours (if there`s not a bathroom on board) for bathroom breaks, snacks, etc. so it didn´t seem that weird.
we got out and were almost knocked off our feet by the wind. patagonia, as a rule, is pretty freaking windy, but this was like nothing else. it was hard to stay standing in this wind. and, it was easy to get gravel thrown into your face/eyes. but really, it was pretty fun.
michael, heroically braving the gravel to the face
in this one, i was trying to take a picture of how crazy-fast the wind was whipping my pants around my ankles… and then my scarf flew in the way (the green dark blob on the left). it was just insane.
after everyone played in the wind, we all got back on the bus ready to go. buuuuut we didn`t yet realize that the so called fun wind was going to delay us… a lot.
the bus driver eventually told us that the road to nowhere was actually just where we were to drive onto the ferry to take us across the straight, but it was much too windy for the ferry to come. so we needed to wait it out… until 6pm! that would be 8 hours of waiting for wind to stop blowing.
also, this was in the middle of nothingness, so they said they´d take us to a restaurant to have lunch… which happened to be an hour away, and still in the middle of nowhere.
so we drove to the restaurant which is of the feast-or-famine sort (either 100% empty if the ferry is running… or 100% full if it is not) and were given two options for lunch: chicken soup or gnocchi with meat sauce. no other choice. we took one of each, and both were good enough.
we finally crossed on the ferry that evening around 4ish (earlier than expected yay!) on this boat…
and arrived in ushuaia, during one of their only 4 hours of darkness each night, at 1:30am.
we got to our hostel (which wasn´t really a hostel but rather a family´s home in which they rent their three upstairs bedrooms to travelers) at 2am and had to knock for almost 5 minutes before we woke someone up to come let us in. it was a long day.
the next morning we got to see ushuaia for the first time by daylight:
