March 14, 2011
Ushuaia.
I will try to make this brief. This is my fourth day at "Club Andino Ushuaia" It has been one of the best campsites for a long time in that it is inexpensive; it's got excellent facilities, but best of all is the view down over the Beagle Channel and the mountains beyond. The outlook is always rainy though. Heavy grey clouds are omnipresent. The best light and chance of sunshine is morning to noon. The rain is usually on by afternoon. The sun can make a reappearance in the evening, but as it's Autumn it's pitch dark at eight.
Sunday was a fine day though. The sun shone most of the day through breaks in the cloud. Allister and Anna, a cycling couple whom we've met, set off for the National Park. Perhaps I should explain. Route 3 ends 24km onwards from Ushuaia in a National Park. They have ridden from Prudhoe Bay-Alaska, the most northern point connected by road in America, and so, it's customary to finish at the most Southern end of the road which is in the park.
The other cycling couple, we've met too are Pradro and Guillaume, Spanish and French respectively remain. There is also a motorcyclist from North America called Kevin, but more on him later. The campsite is an out-off season ski-station: the chair-lift with lines up the grassy hillside are dormant this time of year. It is only a twenty-minute walk down the steep hill towards the centre to the nearest Supermarket a trip I usually do by bike as the shopping is a little heavy on the way back.
However, today I decided to walk it as I wanted to get some photos. The streets, because of little valleys which contain streams that tinkle their way down the mountain-side down towards the centre and waterfront, undulate up and over the sides of these small valleys. And it's easy to become lost but not totally disorientated, as the houses are all low one-storey, so one can always see over them from higher up to the bay and head in that general direction finding the way again. All the same, walking is not easy here, as in most Argentine cities the pedestrian is seemingly disenfranchised in the public space. Argentina I think still clings to the backward 1950s notion that you are not someone unless you drive a car. There are no pavements or sidewalks as you call them in the US. Unlike in enlightened European countries where the municipal owns a band of maintained flagstone walkway along city streets; here the property owner owns out to the road's edge: some concrete their patch while the adjoining property can be unpaved bumpy grass; and on hillsides streets there's usually a drop down from one property front to the next. Allot of places the only place possible to walk is on the road itself. Here you walk around parked cars; another unique right this over-privileged section of society have. And you most always be careful when crossing as not to be run-over by drivers that will not stop.
The nicest part of today's walk was by the waterfront towards the port. The water was a grey mirror reflecting the equally grey sky and was highlighted in colours of many yachts. The port is a container depot and Is their at the right time to get a photo of the machine lifting one off the top of the three high stack. Farther along; there's all the tourist excursion boats and booking booths. The walk deteriorated on Crossing the big road and up a steep hill to the main thoroughfare, where at the end is the Armanda Argentina, or the Navy; and looking up a side street there's a strip-club with a cut out of a skimpily dressed young woman above a sign "SHOW". And the walk which doubled back along the tacky shopping street felt dishearteningly claustrophobic closed in between shop windows selling junk I've no need for. I hurried along. By now there are drops of rain. Outside a cafe, I spot two touring bikes with clear plastic over the panniers to protect against rain. And there was the weather beaten French camper-van driver and his wife talking to a group of French tourists that blocked my path "excuse moi" one said and let me pass.
Arriving back at the campsite just before the rain came on heavily for the evening, Allister and Anna had arrived back from the National Park and were having a farewell drink with Pradro and Guillaume, as they've booked into a hostel for the last few nights before flying out.
A bone of contention, in the conversation, is the entry fee to the Park as it is with all National Parks in Argentina, namely foreigners pay twice or three times as much as nationals, which most foreigners see as totally unfair. Indeed I've met an Englishman that balked at the fee saying "I've spend a fortune getting here, why should I pay so much more?" This was Allaster's argument too. "We have been three years cycling from Alaska" he protested to the Park Ranger. "65 pesos for Foreigners" returned the Ranger unfazed.
Kevin the motorcyclist from the States came in and sat down and the conversation changed to music. He carries a Ukulele, but says he can't play it as well as Greg Hawkes, who plays a collection of 15 Beatles covers on the small string instrument; part of Kevin's music collection which I've imported to my own computer amongst other music including a Brazilian cover album of David Bowie songs and lots of Reggae covers of sixties hits.
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