El Calafate – Rio Gallegos – Ushuaia

Ferry crossing the Strait of Magellan at Punta Delgada
Ferry crossing the Strait of Magellan at Punta Delgada (Phone picture)

FEB 24, 2016 – While Roman was flying back to Buenos Aires, I spent another day in El Calafate – the bus to Ushuaia only ran at night, and I had to wait for some clothes I had forgotten in El Chaltén. At La Tablita, I ate Patagonian roasted lamb for lunch – a real treat. I got ready for almost 24 hours of sitting in a bus, with a short break in Rio Gallegos, a ferry crossing, and two border crossings: While Ushuaia is on Argentinian soil, the Western half of Tierra del Fuego is Chilean. By now I knew that Chile is very picky about produce crossing its borders, but I was still a bit surprised when even dried fruit was confiscated at the entry point. After a long bus ride through spectacular landscapes, I arrived at the “End of the World”. Besides Ushuaia, two places in Chile also compete for the title of “world’s southernmost city”: Punta Arenas further north, which feels more urban (but at a population of 57’000, Ushuaia has every right to call itself a city), and Puerto Williams further south, which, at a population of 2’874, should probably go back to calling itself a village.

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