En fin el mundo...

Spent 4 days in the southern most city in the world, called Ushuaia.
Traveled there by bus, first from Puerto Madryn to Rio Gallegos and then to Ushuaia.
In total about 1700km by bus... :-) And the bus journey itself is already an adventure, cruising through the windy pampas of Patagonia...

I summarised again my activities in Ushuaia and made for each day a short story. There we go:

Hiking in the Tierra del Fuego national park:
Together with 3 French guys (Johanna and Christoph, a nice couple from Paris; and Sophie) and 1 Polish girl (Natalia) we took the bus to the Tierra del Fuego national park.
You need to buy some entrance fee for the park, but then you can stay for 2 days in the park.
There are several trails you can do and also a very nice small campsite next to the -river to stay overnight.
We did the hike along the coast of the Beagle channel. It takes about 4 hours but it is very easy to go
and you have fantastic views of the landscape like snow cowered mountains, forests and grass land.
At the end of the trail we got to a view-point were you have really a fantastic view of the bay you hiked before and the surroundings. From there the bus takes you to the camp side or back to Ushuaia.
The camping place looked really nice and calm and is located next to a small river. Must be really nice to stay a night there and do some other hikes on the next day. But we went back to Ushuaia and cooked a really tasty steak with vegetables for dinner and this was also very nice!! :-)

On Mount Martial:
On the next day everybody was tired from hiking yesterday, so I decided to hike to mount Martial by my own. It is a mountain very close to Ushuaia, with a small skiing resort, even smaller than the "famous" "Sternstein" back home.
I directly started in front of my hostel, although it is recommended to take a taxi to the chairlift station. After one hour hike i arrived at the station, but the lift was broken down. So again half an hour hiking up to the top station of the lift. From there you can do 2 trails, one is going to the glacier (1h one way) the other one is 15min and leads to an view point were you can see Ushuaia and the Beagle channel.
I did both but was a little bit disappointed about the glacier. Because it is just a small snow-field. And further up, where it starts getting interesting, you are only allowed to go with a guide or "special equipment" (whatever that means...).
On the way back to Ushuaia I lost the path and found myself somewhere in the forest on a mountain bike downhill pist. Stayed on this pist, because it was always going down, so I thought in the end I should be somewhere at the ocean.
Never met a mountain-biker at all the way down, but that does not surprise me, because you must be completely crazy if you want to go down there by bike. A lots of big and wide jumps and narrow passages with lots of rocks and at some passages you can fall 5-10m down if you make a wrong move... :-) In the end i ended up in Ushuaia and then it was easy to get back to the hostel!! ;-)

Hitch-hiking to Esmeralda lake:
Originally I wanted to make a sailboat-turn to the islands and lighthouse in the Beagle channel. Unfortunately the turn was cancelled for this day so I had to look for an alternative. Decided to hike to a small lake called "Esmeralda". It is located 18km outside of Ushuaia and all the tourist buses went there already earlier that day. So I tried myself in hitch-hiking in South America at the end of the world... :-)
It worked out fine and after some time Emilio, a local guy picked me up. Had some small talk conversation in Spanish, was a smart guy... ;-)
The hike back to the lake was very nice and it took me about an hour to get there. Unfortunately it started raining once I was there. The way back was very muddy then and I forgot to put on my hiking boots that day. Was a really slippery hike back in my sneakers with almost no profile... :-)

Sailboat turn in the Beagle channel:
Together with Jolien from the Netherlands I did a 4h sailboat turn to the light-house and the surrounding islands. Unfortunately we had very less wind and therefore the boat was runned by a motor the whole time...
But still it was nice to stay at the sailboat with just 12 people on board rather than being on one of those big tourist ferries with 200 passengers...
We also stopped at a small Island and did a short walk there before we went back to Ushuaia.
In the afternoon Jolien and me went to the museum "Fin del mundo" and after that I packed my stuff to be ready taking the early bus tomorrow to Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales, to do the famous Torres del Paine hike there... :-)