El fin del Mundo

We made it! We are at the end of the world! From El Calafate we took a bus to Puerto Natales. The main entry point of ParQue Torres del Paine, which is in Chile. So we spent a few days in Chile again. The stamps in my passport really keep adding up from all this border-hopping. The passport is brand new, but already there is hardly space for all the other stamps I hopefully will be able to get. They are starting to put stamps on the page where your kids should be, if you have or will be able to get them. So now I will have to wait five more years for that!

Torres del Paine was beautiful, but did not blow me away as much as Los Galciares did. We saw lots of wildlife, though. Heaps of guanacos (from the lama and vicuna family, condors (high in the sky, not up-close unfortunately), and eagle from up-close (impressive!!!), foxes (one from up-close because it was practically eating from of our hands), birds, sheeps (domestic), and then some...

From Puerto Natales we took another bus to Ushuaia. Actually it was a realy of three busses, from big to small. In total the trip was 14 hours. With practically the same landscape: the Patagonian savannah. But finally there it was: the end of the world! Where boats deteriorate...

It´s weird to think that you cannot be any closer to Antarctica. And against better knowlegde -I mean big chance I´ll die off fear before I get there (for those who do not know why: I am a bit afraid of an untaimed and wild sea, just a little bit :-)). And knowing it is the wildest sea on the planet earth....Or you will have to shove heaps and heaps of drugs into my mouth (enough to keep me down for a week) and make me swallow the whole bunch of anaesthetizing stuff, or just knock me out badly- we informed ourselves about the passage to Antarctica. But there are no boats running anymore...Otherwise I would have to torture myself making the choice whether to go or not.......pfffffffffffffff. It would have been a really difficult choice for me, I mean once in a lifetime....

In Ushuaia we are ´forced´to stay for a week as the first plane will go next saturday. And we are happy to stay for a longer period of time in one place, so we can rest a bit and let everything sink in, do some errands and give the home front a sign of life. We will go for some mini-trekking, visit an old prison, maybe get on a boat through the beagle channel to see some sealife, get on a train towards the end of the world and such...We´ll keep on trucking!