Update Ushuaia

Now that everyone has all but forgotten about my blog due to my errr, infrequent posts, I figure now is as good a time as any to resume. Maybe since no one is paying attention, I can write something terribly revealing and embarrasing. Or maybe my blog will transform into a personal journal of sorts as I complete this adventurous stage of my life and move on to one a bit more stable and well, boring.

My last post was March 6 and I feel that before I delve into a reflective psycho babble post (Oh yes, I have one brewing), I should tell everyone what I've been up to. I'm a bit short on plot, right?

Well, after the whirlwind visit with my brother Kevin came the whirlwind and slightly longer visit from my brother Bob and his family. The 5 of us ate our way through BA for a few days and then flew down to el fin del mundo, Ushuaia, Argentina's Southern most city at the entrance to Antarctica.

We stepped outside of the Ushuaia airport and were attacked by winds so strong that I was blown around like an empty trash can. We had to yell to hear each other and even then it was hard to hear anything but the wind. I gave up on talking, resorting instead to silently following someone's lead while focusing the bulk of my energy on shivering to stay warm. We stood around helplessly, somehow hoping irrationally that a cab would sweep down from cielo and whisk us away to our cozy cabin where we could regroup and map out a plan to confront the city.
And after we were ignored by a few passing cabs for God knows what reason, a young cab driver finally did stop to pick up our sorry shaking corpses. We wound our way away from the airport and up a bumpy road toward a mammoth glacier oozing down a central valley in the Martial Mountain Range. A look back gave us a better view of the airport and helped us to understand why the wind. The Ushuaia airport is situated right at the water's edge of a bay on Cape Horn. I've heard stories of boats passing through Cape Horn's storms and some boats that didn't make it. Now I understand the fuss.

The town of Uhsuaia grows out of the rocky cracks of life between an unforgiving wind battered bay and steep, rocky, jagged mountains. If God created this world, he, she, it must have started at the South Pole with crude tools, like a chisel and hammer. And God must have been young because Ushuaia has all the emotional characteristics of youth. It's loud, impulsive, unpredictable, forceful, impressive.

Ushuaia started off as a prison town and later became a naval base. Sort of like Barrow, Alaska, the place where commanding officers threaten to send the out of control hot dog pilots in every Top Gun type movie. There's a ton of international tourism, but only within the last decade and it's still not as well visited as Calafate, San Martin de Los Andes, or the Barialoche area. The one touristy street, San Martin, is surrounded by serious grit. The towns ancestry, military and, I assume, prison worker or inmates is apparent. For a place so windy and cold, the homes are a disaster-flimsy corrugated aluminum shacks. The roads and sidewalks are in careless disrepair. The schools bare years of graffitti over graffitti. And the prices of food, goods, and services are in many ways higher than most towns in the US, despite the fact that the 3.70 Argentine pesos = 1 US Dollar and despite the fact that the average Argentine middle class wage is about 450 US Dollars/month.

Why do people live here? I wondered to myself as I walked around that first day. Don't get me wrong, I never felt that Ushuaia was an ugly place. It's almost wordlessly beautiful and enchanting. But it's so unforgiving in almost every sense. The day's climate typically is some combination of sun, warm, sleet, snow, and lots of wind. In any order. You feel almost trapped by the imposing mountains in the background, bunched up against the Cape Horn. Surely the Argentine government must have thought this the perfect torture for prisoners, to be all the time stood up against a wall of mountains and subjected to battering from the Cape Horn weather machine.

As we settled in, I began to understand why people stay in Ushuaia and which types of people thrive. Here's a list of the highlights:

1. Martial Glacier. This is the glacier that I mentioned which is such an amazing background or framing that God could have vomited at the base of it and the cumulative beauty of the scene would be unchanged. We hiked up the glacier two times. The first, we didn't make it. We ran out of both water and energy and the altitude was too much. Not to be deterred, we went back for a second attempt on our last day, after a lunch that I will describe in another highlight.

This time, I made it and Bob and my nephew Alex, to his credit (a tough little guy), almost made it. Again, we ran out of water, but I felt drawn to the ice and til mass. I rarely stopped for breath, worried I'd lose momentum and quit. I hopped huge cracks in the bedrock, trudged through the snow, slipped on steep ice patches, scrambled and climbed up sheer ice and rock passages until before I knew it, I was on top of the beast.

Standing on the giant that the first day I had seen in the distance and thought that I would never have the guts or desire to hike up to. I turned around and the slope down was more than intimidating. I thought back to when I was a kid. I used to climb up trees and then would freeze up and freak out because I was too afraid to get down. But now I couldn't have my brother Matt call the fire department. The only option if I couldn't make it down the glacier on my own was to wait for a rescue team.

I seriously wondered whether I could do it without incurring at least some serious bodily injury. Stupid. What had I gotten myself into. Sometimes I push myself so far so fast that I don't realize what I'm getting into (Thank you to the friends and family who know me well and are now laughing and saying duh). I was light headed, out of water, tired, and not thinking so clearly. I sat down to catch my breath and steady myself. Looking out at the view from the glacier I knew immediately it was one of the most amazing scenes I'd ever witnessed outside of postcards. I could see for miles and the bay opened up on all sides, framed by steep mountains on both sides, the outlines of Antarctica possibly etched in the misty distance. It could be argued that the view was worth the risk.

The best way back down was to use my head, take it step by step, decision by decision. The trip up was completed in haste, like a body builder muscling through a swim. The trip down wouldn't have the benefit of strength so I'd have to replace it with grace, technique, and intelligence. I mustered confidence and started out, mentally evaluating the choice of almost every step and sketchy passage. The best path and the best way to move on that path. I followed tracks from a professionally guided group that had descended before me. And in the end, much more slowly than I had ascended, I safely completed the descent.

And it occurred to me after I'd made it down that heaving myself up the Martial Glacier was one of the most stupid things I'd ever done in my life. But I also realized that sometimes you have to do things like that to feel alive, to show yourself that you're still physically capable, and that you can overcome scary challenges if you slow down and use your head.

I don't know if I'd do it over again. But the truth is that I've been feeling kind of old lately, like my body isn't what it used to be. Making it up that glacier reminded me that I'm ok.

2. Penguins. Seeing penguins in Ushuaia ain't cheap. But it's simply something you must do. You sit on a bus for a few hours, walk through the historically significant Haberton sheep ranch (now a cattle ranch and tourism income source), and then take a 10 minute zodiac boat out to the windiest and coldest little island you can imagine. Upon stepping onto the barren patch of penguin island Earth, you pull every strap of your gortex coat tight and still shiver. And oh yeah, there are surreal little black and white birds all over the place. But if you look at the penguins wrong or even if your shadow scares them, the island's female keeper (a beautiful young woman with frostbite scars on her face and by the looks of it blind in one eye) will berate you until you feel 5-years-old.

You walk around for half an hour, try hard to realize that you're doing something really cool, take pictures, and then get back on that zodiac and head back to the ranch to warm up on tea, cakes, and cookies. On the bus trip back, you stop to see trees that have been wind blown in one direction so much throughout their development that their branches are stuck permanently like medussa's locks in a gale.

But the part of the experience I enjoyed the most was talking Argentine history and politics with the keeper of the island. It was hard not to be intrigued by such a confident, rugged, and intelligent person who, despite her physical scars, had such a powerful soul. She shined so bright that after talking with her for a short time I no longer saw her scars. I wanted to hear her story and so I gleaned it through her opinions, personality, and explanation of her country and city's history and politics. We chatted the entire trip back, her educated Spanish vocabulary oftentimes too much for me to follow. And by the end of the experience, I was glad I'd spent the money. My soul and intellect had been fed a Thanksgiving feast. Sure, the penguins were cool, but the person who showed them to us for me was the highlight.

3. Speaking of Feasts.... It's all about the Fuegian Lamb. Es decir, Lamb from Tierra del Fuego. If you are in Ushuaia, you must drive 20 minutes out of town to a tourist trap. A place built so that you can sit and eat above a rushing mountain stream and after your meal walk through a Siberian Husky breeding center. Las Cotorras is known for its all you can eat lamb, cooked all morning crucifix style around a wood bonfire. It ain't cheap, but the lamb comes out to you on your own personal mini grill in a steaming stack surrounded crudely but tastefully by potatoes and parsley. The meat is effortlessly tender, the fat so flavorful it will make you cry, and the skin crispy and chewy goodness. When you finish, they bring you more. You keep eating until you get sick. Then you go climb a glacier to work it all off. I think I have just described my version of heaven.

4. Tierra del Fuego National Park. Our second to last day we drove our rental car, after much bickering with ourselves and Garmin over directions, to Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego. The first trail we chose was my choice. The description was 3 or so miles straight up a mountain. It claimed to be an 8 hour round trip. The difficulty rating was high and people without proper physical stamina and equipment were urged not to try this trail. It called to me. It's like when you tell a kid not to, it makes him want to do it even more.

No way a trip that short could take 8 hours. No way. They must think I'm some type of 3 pack a day Porteno. I swim 4-5 times a week and eat super healthy. No way 6 miles round trip was going to take me that long.

A half our into the hike, I started to believe the trail description. It was the toughest trail that I've hiked in my life. Unrelentingly straight up with slippery roots and rocks and poorly marked in some areas. Alex and I took the lead and after about an hour and a half made it up to a clearing, a bald rock face overlooking a beautiful vista of the park. We sat down on the rock and enjoyed the view and snacked, thinking that we had made it to the top. That wasn't so bad, I said in a still winded voice to Alex.

Soon after, while looking for a private place to answer the call of nature, I noticed that the trail continued. I was interrupted by two hikers who were speedily making their way down the path. I swore, pulled up my zipper, and acted as though I were exploring the path instead of err...and asked them how much further the trail went. They pointed to a mountain top far in the distance, one well beyond the tree line and still snow covered. They told me that they made it another mile and a half, but had turned back because it was too much. And then I knew for sure that the description of the trail was accurate. Sure, it was short in distance, but going straight up takes a lot out of you. And there was no way that I was continuing up that mountain. I was out of water and more importantly, unmotivated and deflated. I returned to Alex and told him the news. He was also disinterested in continuing and so we waited for Bob and Jennie to meet us at the clearing and then hiked back down (during which time I slipped on a root and fell flat on my face).

The rest of our experience in the Park was far more pleasant. For a while, we sat at the shore of a glacial lake, enjoyed the silence, and looked out to a stunning view of the lush deep green steep mountains.

We finished the day with three short hikes. Hikes with soft moss paths that muffled our steps and soothed our overworked legs, like walking on clouds in a dream. One trail took us to the edge of the park where it opened up to the South, island after island that leads out in a chain ending at Antarctica. Just as a friend described, it pulls you in its direction. You want to keep exploring, to see more, the next island and the one after that. It seems to get more peaceful and enchanting the further out you walk, until you're stopped by a crude wire fence indicating the start of a nature preserve....

On the plane leaving Ushuia, I couldn't really decide if I'd make it a priority to come back. I felt as though I wasn't done with the place, like there was more depth, a new perspective to be learned. I wanted to hike more through the mountains, learn to grill lamb, fish in the Cape Horn, sail and island hop around the entrance to Antarctica, delve into the history of the place, put the pieces of the puzzle together that were only beginning to make sense. I admit to only having been a tourist in Ushuaia. I did everything tourists are supposed to do. Some places are no more than tourist traps. They are more or less void of history or background and you can suck out of the place its value via the cliche tourist experience. Ushuaia is not one of those places. I think living there would reveal much more....