Ushuaia Free Camp

You wake up and think to yourself well, here I am in Ushuaia (oos-y-ya in Spanish there is no “h”)…and slowly you remember that even so you have to get up and get on with the day.

If there were any doubt about the course of action there’s always Rusty to remind you it’s time to push back the covers and face the frigid air. And Rusty loved our first campsite outside the city. We went there after our first choice did not work out thanks to an aggressive campground dog that took a dislike to him but he made up for that scare  by enjoying the campground next to the train station. We gave up hot showers to keep him happy. 

It’s a steam train tourist attraction and  travels five miles into the national park. The comfortable two hour ride in a heated carriage with lunch served costs $140 each with a further $45 approximately to enter the national park. It can’t be that good can it?  

Rusty enjoyed this camp. There was lots of activity to watch as campers from all over the world came and went. 

The closer it got to Christmas the fuller it got. The French overlanders were absent but they gathered downtown on the waterfront. 

These were Germans in expedition trucks, Brazilians in vans, an Australian, an English couple and a bunch of assorted Argentines touring their own country. 

Brazil used to build air cooled Volkswagen and youngsters still enjoying using the vans as campers. 

Elton and Sol tried getting us drunk on a mixture of vermouth and whiskey which is surprisingly not too sweet. I had to take a nap but they invited us to see them in their home in Porto Alegre in Brazil which we plan to do when we go north. You go north to escape winter down here so we expect to be there in April. 

Americans! Blake an experienced South American traveler had lots of good advice about Brazil. He’s in a big older Ram diesel truck with a large camper shell. Colin and Sarah from Oregon are in a Ford 150 with the pop top shell and two young boys who are thriving on the road. They were off trying to induce Rusty  to chase stick with no luck.  

He came  to us with a stuffed monkey from his foster home but after a few weeks he didn’t need it any more to reassure him. And he has no interest in party tricks. 

I was lounging in bed reading and he came up to join me after his first patrol of the day outside. 

We spent three nights in this campground, an abandoned municipal facility, known to overlanders as “the train station,” before we retreated to our apartment downtown.

Paul and Andrea in their Sprinter box van caught up to us from our last encounter in Arequipa Peru. Their daughter is having a grandchild so they plan to ship home to Germany in a few weeks. 

Their dog died in Mexico freaked out by fireworks and it worked itself into such a state it died. She is still mourning Mango and gets her therapy from Rusty. 

We are more than 3,000 kilometers from Buenos Aires the capital. That’s 2,000 miles in old money. 

Snow capped peaks are picturesque but they give you an idea of the actual temperatures here. We were aching for a hot shower after three days with no intention of standing around outside with a solar shower. 

Argentina does not take care of its roads like Chile does. The national highway turns to dirt at the edge of the city. 

That was a fun stop. Up next: apartment dwelling downtown. 

Ushuaia

We have arrived, the job is done.  

I trust everyone had a fine Festivus and aired all their grievances properly. We spent the holiday in an air b and b trying to escape the wet and wind for a few days. 

We finished the trip to Ushuaia by coincidence on the longest day of the year (in the southern hemisphere), December 21st around lunchtime. We came around a corner and there were the twin pillars with room to pull off the highway. I took the photo and that left us wondering what next? 

Lunch obviously. 

Steak and wine overlooking the Beagle Channel with no more road left to drive. 

I had lemon mousse for dessert and it tasted appropriately like a Key Lime Pie which put me in mind of home. 

I couldn’t stop staring at the Beagle Channel. Tour boats and fishing boats came and went. A couple of boats with masts motored by in the distance. Wild Tierra Del Fuego was very flat for a day. 

The two hour drive to the city from our campground in Tolhuin was quite scenic.  We could have been driving the Rockies in late fall, not the Fuegian Andes in summer.

There is this band of mountains that encircles the northern approaches to Ushuaia that they call the Andes of Tierra Del Fuego. 

It wasn’t windy for a change but it was drizzling enough to spoil my photos through the windshield on an already drab colorless day. 

I hope they render some idea of the last thirty miles of our journey from Key West. 

It was a pretty spot and happily it was only 1400 feet above sea level.  

And then the arrival. 

It seems the netting above is to catch any skiers who might accidentally fall off a passing ski lift. We saw no such amusements as we drove through. 

47 degrees and icy damp sounds about right for Tierra Del Fuego at almost 55 degrees south latitude. 

I have put a 110 kilometer an hour (70mph) sticker on the back of GANNET2 since arriving in Argentina. Technically it’s not legally required for foreign vehicles but it’s one less thing to have to discuss with any over enthusiastic member of the Gendarmeria  Nacional. Some vans have 80 or 90kph stickers. I went for the fastest I could find but I have no idea what is the correct self limiting top speed, but we won’t be doing 70 in any event. 

Ushuaia is not a beautiful waterfront tourist attraction.  For us it’s an achievement but the locals, disappointingly, treat our goal as just another grubby underfunded city to mooch around in. The police checkpoint at the entrance was not staffed when we drove in: 

Drizzle of course:

Ushuaia should be gorgeous with the Martial Mountains behind and the Beagle Channel in front but it’s really rather drab. It was founded in 1884 and has a population of 80,000 people more or less. 

Its name comes from the Yagan word for cove and I should point out locals don’t pronounce the “h.” They say “oos-why-ya” when speaking of their city. 

Argentina has had a crap economy for 25 years with inflation you wouldn’t believe and debt defaults served up with the usual self serving corruption. There has been a two tier economy with a thriving black market which meant foreigners with dollars could exchange money for half the value so Argentina was available with a 50 percent nationwide discount. 

Not anymore as they have elected a president promising economic reforms which will involve he says short term pain in exchange for long term stability.

From Wikipedia:

Javier Gerardo Milei^[b](born 22 October 1970) is an Argentine economist and politician who has served as President of Argentinasince 2023. He has taught university courses and written on various aspects of economics and politics and also hosted radio programs on the subject. Milei's views distinguish him within mainstream Argentine politics.

In November 2021, Milei was elected to the Argentine Chamber of Deputies, representing the City of Buenos Airesfor La Libertad Avanza. As a national deputy, he limited his legislative activities to voting, focusing instead on critiquing what he sees as Argentina's political elite and its propensity for high government spending. Milei pledged not to raise taxes and donated his national deputy salary through a monthly raffle. He defeated the incumbent economy minister, Sergio Massa, in the second round of the 2023 general election, for the post of president, on a platform that held the ideological dominance of Peronismresponsible for the ongoing Argentine monetary crisis.

He was known for campaigning with a chain saw to illustrate how he would prune government spending but his public antics only made him more visible. His opponent was a member of the old government and had no hope of overcoming the widespread disgust and exhaustion of business as usual. 

Here’s the thing: Argentina is stabilizing its economy which is bad for us as we no longer get the inflationary discount but it’s terrible for people who lived in the old inflationary system and have lost their jobs and hundreds of thousands have been pruned. Eventually things should improve but for now the country is impoverished and it shows. 

We went food shopping at La Anonima, one of two big chains in Patagonia. The other is Carrefour, the French supermarket conglomerate. 

It’s slightly bizarre finding yourself here at the bottom of the world just shopping as usual on a Saturday afternoon. There was no ticker tape parade to celebrate our heroic drive. No one cares, nor should they. 

Layne went inside to discover decent fruits but limp vegetables while I walked Rusty among the mere mortals who have never driven the PanAmerican. They got on with their lives. 

Just another work day along the Beagle Channel where 200 years ago the youthful Fitzroy and Darwin explored together exploding the myth of a human centric universe. 

Not everyone uses internal combustion but behind the one horsepower local are trash trucks which say “We get it done” which is a motto I’m now inclined to adopt.  

Eeyore trailing along behind: 

Delicious hamburgers in La Antonia. My friend Greg calls the health warnings “Stop Signs.”  These have no less than four. They must be barfy. 

The sign says cool drinks. 

We tried to take campground with a hot shower in a heated bathroom but their dogs attacked Rusty so we retreated to the wild camp in a former city campground that overlanders use. We have friends meeting us in town on the second of January so we will do some exploring along the beagle channel I hope and get to see some of this impressive coastline before we leave.   

The afternoon of January fourth we start our drive north to get home by way of Brazil and then back to Peru to drive the way we came more or less. One step at a time. And we’ve still got to drive to Alaska and the Arctic.