We made the spectacular flight to Ushuaia on Friday afternoon! The scenery along the way was beautiful! Snow capped mountain peaks everywhere (well, everywhere while I was awake, I always fall asleep on the transporation, aeroplane, car, bus, anything)!
As we approached Ushuaia the mountains were either side of the plane and you wondered where we were going to land! The descent seemed like a struggle as you could imagine the pilots working the plane to fit the wind that was actually pushing us UP from the mountains! It would have been a tricky approach I imagine! We then did a low turn towards the airport which was also covered in snow! The airport seemed to have been purpose built out in the canal as Ushuaia itself is a city almost carved into the mountain. When we landed everyone clapped! We thought it was a little funny (we later realised that maybe it’s something they do here as they clapped when we landed back in El Calafate which is an open, easy to access airport on a large plain! hehe).
Our introduction to Ushuaia was beautiful! Our taxi driver was really friendly and pointed out all the good spots on the way to our hostel. The whole town was covered in another beautiful layer of snow (again what we’ve been hoping for WOO HOO)! So we walked around the nice snowy/icy streets (no falls today) and explored the small little town and it’s main street.
Saturday it was Cerro Castor! (Mt Beaver in English haha!) Beavers were introduced into South America from Canada and they have no predator to keep them under control so they’re a bit of a pest in Ushuaia now unfortunately. So we think it’s funny that a mountain is names after them!!
We had a great day at the snow at Cerro Castor. The resort and mountain itself are great! Quite big, steep and lots of area to explore. Lots of ski teams go to that mountain to train. The only problem is that there could have been a bit more snow… The cover was just enough so that you couldn’t see the rocks… but you could carve up your board with them…. As Matt learnt DOH 🙁 So Matt’s board got a bit of a hiding, he was annoyed but okay about it as we’ll be getting new boards in Canada. PHEW! All in all, we walked out having had a nice day at the snow, and no broken bones or injuries. All was good!
Sunday we organised our week and went to the Spanish meeting at 6pm on Sunday night! We didn’t understand much of the public talk… We just concentrated on understanding what scriptures were being looked up which we could get!! The Watchtower we read along with in Spanish and translated for ourselves with our English version… About 3/4 of the way through we got BRAIN FRY!! So we lost it a bit towards then end and had to save our energy for trying to say hi to our brothers and sisters in Spanish!! We had quite a few people come up and say hi and a couple of sisters and one brother who came up spoke English with us which was great! So the rest of the evening was spent talking Spanglish.. A little Spanish and a little English. 🙂
Monday we took a transfer out to do a dog sled!! We arrived early as the same transfer takes you to the mountain, so we walked around on what had now turned to BROWN VERY SLIPPERY ICE. It had all compacted and was really difficult to walk on! But no stacks this time! Just a few close calls.
While we were waiting for staff to realise we were there we walked past all the dogs (106 of them!!! 22 puppies) and they all started howling together…. we weren’t sure if this was good or bad! But one of the girls told us later they howl when they’re happy! I think they were happy we were their and they would get to go for a run soon (not all of them I guess… but they didn’t know that… imagine a 106 dog sled??? haha! Rocket dog sled!)
Here’s video of what we saw, very cool:
The dog sled was really fun but unfortunately the snow was the best conditions for them. It was a bit too icy and too warm which makes it hard for them. The dogs were really friendly though and they just loved running! When the sled stopped they would bite out chunks of ice from the ground as if it was their drink… No need for dog bowls here!!
Here’s a video of the dogs taking off in the sled:
We also tried cross country skiing in the afternoon which was a lot more difficult than we thought! Initially we put the skis on and started gliding and we thought, yep this is sweet. Easy. Then we approached a downwards slope and realised we didn’t know how to stop…. But it panned out flat, so that was okay as we knew we’d slow down and eventually stop. That was okay. Then we founded a bigger downward slope and that’s when the falling over started!!! 🙂 Was fun trying, we’d like to try proper skiing still one day though!
.
Tuesday: We planned a boat trip down the Beagle Canal for the morning but it was so incredibly windy that this got put off until the afternoon. We ended up going at 3.30pm which was really nice. It was absolutely freezing on the boat though, so we would go outside to take pictures until our hands got numb(through the gloves!) and then quickly head back inside to thaw out! We did this process a few times. The scenery was really nice, we saw 2 types of Sea Lions/Seals up on a rock island in the canal. Some of them were huge and made some pretty funny noises! We saw a variety of birds as well which were pretty. Unfortunately the penguins are smart and go North a little for winter so no penguin spotting for us!!
Wednesday – Thursday: We hoped to be able to go back to Cerro Castor while we were in Ushuaia but the slow in the town melted away (turned brown and gross Tam! haha) and so the mountain wouldn’t have had enough snow.
Instead we hung out in Ushuaia, met up with Belinda and Jackie from the Spanish Congregation again a few times which was great! Belinda worked in a shop that sold all leather goods and fur jackets etc… I was in love with the stuff in the store! Unfortuantely I wouldn’t be able to get most of it through quarantine easily! hehe
Then Thursday we took another scenic flight back to El Calafate to begin our journey back North!
Timeframe: Friday 26 July – Thursday 1 August 2013
Leave a Reply