Tuesday, January 14th, 2025

We must have been very tired indeed because, when I was rudely jerked from my slumbers by yet another ‘phone call to Lucie – this time at 05:10 – the quilt looked almost totally unmoved. I felt she would probably switch her iPhone to the “silent” mode for future nights.

It was already full daylight, so a return to dreamland for either of us was quickly deemed impossible.

From our window, we could see mountains that still, in what was the “July” of the southern hemisphere, had considerable amounts of snow on their south-facing slopes. In the middle-distance, the Beagle Channel glittered softly.

As I watched, a Swallow, yes, a Swallow, alighted on a telephone wire outside. Proverbially, just the one does not make a Summer, but the sight of it, with snow-capped peaks behind it, seemed somewhat incongruous.

Breakfast, in the hostel was simple indeed and I caused my dear wife much anxiety by having two servings of toast. Ever since my mishap in Auckland, she sees even the simplest toaster as a means by which I might be able to wreak my own partial destruction ! I managed without incident. If I could continue to be unscathed, I might soon be able to add a Daenerys Targaryen like “the unburnt” to any introductory description I may make of myself in the future.

We are not inclined to laze around, so Lucie searched around for a bit before (over) triumphantly announcing she had located a ten kilometre hike we could do. This would take a mere three and a half hours which, errrr, would involve a steep three hundred metre climb ….. Boots on and out we went.

We headed west, towards the airport, but further inland. The first part of the route led us through what I can only call “residential districts”, because people do live there. Most of it was poor quality indeed and to describe it as a shanty town would be to considerably elevate its status. A lot of houses had obviously been constructed from whatever was lying around, odd pieces of wood, corrugated iron and plastic and so on. Many were still being built out of the same hodge-podge of disparate materials. Some dilapidated parked cars were also, obviously, being used to live, or at least, sleep, in. There was rubbish everywhere, There were rubbish bins on poles, presumably because of rats, outside of most places, but people did not seem, in the main, to use them. With its ill-surfaced roads, cracked pavements and shabby buildings, it was more like Dodge City than a 21st century suburb.

The occasional “maintained” building tended to be an aesthetic nightmare and stuck out like a sore thumb. Most of those were commercial property anyway. At one, a drug-store, Lucie managed to buy a pair of nail scissors. We never bring these with us, because they always get confiscated.

It was a relief to finally find the start of our hiking trail and enter the greenery. Almost at once the flora took on an almost prehistoric air. The bushes and trees were often draped in mosses and other saprophytic plants and, although we were still within the city limits, we could easily have been in some remote jungle.

The first stretch of trail was of just under two kilometres and then we emerged into an area of building plots that were new enough not to be shown on our map program. Hundreds of plots had buildings in various states of construction. Some, admittedly, were quite nice – but nice is a comparative term. The same materials as in the city proper were being employed in what mostly appeared to be do-it-yourself projects. At least the corrugated iron was new and shiny. There was already rubbish everywhere.

Eventually, after crossing a stream and squeezing through a barbed-wire fence, we found our way back to the path and our first “supposed” sight of the day, a waterfall. The tiny stream, running over a few rocks would not otherwise have attracted our attention. We began that climb that I mentioned earlier and it was a steep one indeed. The sun had come out and was quite hot – although the often stiff breeze remained chill. The flora now became positively primeval. The woods were ancient and untended and often clogged with fallen trees and undergrowth.

Towards the top of the first climb, we encountered a group of Buzzards. In Europe, you can, occasionally spot a pair, but there were at least a dozen and we managed to snap several in the same tree at once. They practically ignored us. Weird.

Onward and ever upward we went and the trail led, in places, through some very thick woodland. It was way-marked most of the time but, without our trusty iPad, we might still be wandering around up there now !

We passed an area where, it is said, there was once a glacier but which is now a peaty bog with warning signs not to walk though it. Whether that was for environmental reasons, or to prevent people getting stuck in the goo, I cannot say. Lucie almost dragged me way, just in case it was the latter.

We came, at length, to a view-point from which Ushuaia could be seen far below. It looked OK, from such an elevation, but we knew the reality up close.

We began to descend, which was quite a relief because, by then, the sun had become very hot indeed. The route was again through thick forest where, from time to time, we almost had to squeeze between the closely packed trees. In a lot of places, the forest floor was strewn with spongey balls of what I thought was a fruit, it certainly smelled fruity. However, a botanist of my acquaintance determined them to be some kind of mushroom Cyttaria espinosae, popularly known in South America as dihueñe (lihueñe, quideñe). It only grows in central Chile and in Argentine Patagonia and is, actually, an edible mushroom. The fruit bodies ripen in early summer and these had fallen from its parasitic (or symbiotic) mycelium in the tree branches above. There were millions of them. We did not know then that they were edible, so we did not try them.

It was very lonely up there. We did not meet anyone until we came to a viewpoint that was quite near the end of the trail and we guessed those people must have approached from the other direction.

Our map program had promised that, when we finally emerged from the trees, it would be close to a cafe/bar. It was wrong – and it was not even Trip Advisor ! It was a swanky hotel, it did have a bar, but it was closed until the evening. Siesta is still a valid excuse to do nothing in South America.

Back on the trail again, we descended into Ushuaia’s north-western suburbs which were, at least, a significant improvement upon its western ones. There was a huge monument of some kind overlooking the harbour.

Our trek had taken longer than expected and we now had to make a choice. Should we go home and eat our cheese and olives – or should we walk into town and try and get some Pesos from the ATM ? We chose option two.

We located the bank where we had seen the lobby with ATMs, but we may as well not have bothered. The local limit on withdrawal amounts. was so low, about twenty dollars US, that it was not worth doing, particularly when to withdraw even that paltry amount would have incurred a fee of fourteen dollars US. The exchange rates in Jupiter had suddenly begun to look attractive !

We still did not know why our cards would not work, it was not, obviously, because we had no money ! We resolved to try them again. We walked along to the Triumph café (Avenida San Martin 1130), sat down and ordered something we still had the cash to pay for if everything went south.

It was a Tuesday and, by coincidence, it was 15:00 – which was 19:00 in Prague. That was the usual start time for our weekly Tuesday Night Drinks (TND) with our buddies there. It is customary for holidaying TND members to whip off a snap and send it to the rest of the gang, so we did just that. Ticking boxes makes me so, so, happy !

At payment time, the terminal refused three different MasterCards, but then suddenly accepted one ….. The waitress remarked that payment terminals made by the Clover company often seemed to have difficulties with MasterCards. SaBar N Pizzadly that type of terminal is cheap and most places seemed to have them.

We walked home, lunched on cheese and olives and, errrr, I fell asleep ……

While we had been out, some difficulty had befallen the plumbing in the apartment underneath us, so we were respectfully requested not to use our en-suite. Luckily, there was a second bathroom, because I really needed a shower after the hike.

In the evening, we decided to go to a nice looking place, Bar N Pizza that was in the Las Lengas Hotel (Goleta Florencia 1722, V9410BHB Ushuaia) and just around the block. Attached to a good hotel, it was quite upmarket and it was lucky we went when we did, because even before we were served, a lot of people were waiting for a table. The waiter seemed to speak English, but his description of the pizza sizes was way, way off. They were vast and of the deep-pan variety, so we were soon grossly over-pizza’d, something I would not have previously believed to be possible. We simply could not finish them, but at least we had lunch for the following day.

Paying, surprise, surprise, was a circus. The terminal, a cheap Clover, (despite the up-market location), simply refused to play ball. Full stop. The cashier wandered off while I was groping for a VISA card and we had to wait ages for him to come back again. I swear my normally placid lady was on the verge of annoyance. Once he finally deigned to amble back over, the VISA card, which I did not want to use, worked at once.

It was still light, but a trifle on the chilly side as we walked home. Down in the harbour, there was still no sign of our boat. Maybe, it would not come !