Dear Friends and Family,

LAND!!! After ten days aboard a restless ship, we were beyond relieved to stand on land again.

Fun fact: after so many days on rough seas, your head continues to perceive a rocking motion while on steady unmoving land. This can go on for a few days to a week. We can verify - it’s true.

Enough bellyaching though! Adventures afoot! We began with a hearty meal in Ushuaia and headed on to Tierra Del Fuego National Park, the southernmost series of mountains, islands, and blue waters in the Patagonia region.

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Pete’s Travel Diary

What to do in Ushuaia: Tierra Del Fuego National Park

Patagonia is a large and beautiful section of South America. It covers 262 million acres of some of the world's most beautiful mountain ranges, deserts, marshes, and even glaciers.

We visited two areas of Patagonia in two different countries. The first is Tierra Del Fuego in Argentina and the second was Torres del Paine in Chile.

In Ushuaia, we decided to arrange what turned out to be a very enjoyable tour of Tierra del Fuego which involved a good hike followed by rafting a lake and river. Adventurers of all ages joined the tour and the hike was at a relatively easy pace. It felt great to move around after being confined to a boat for 10 days.

The tour also included a nice lunch of local dishes, bread, nuts, olives, locally brewed wine, and a dessert that consisted of delicious blueberries and a cookie. All in all, it was well worth the expense. They picked us up from our AirBnB, which was off the beaten path.

The Selk‘nam People and the Yamana People

Tierra Del Fuego was once home to its own native tribes. The Selk’nam and Yamana tribes, who inhabited this particular area, thrived on land that gets very cold. The first Europeans to reach the area dubbed it “Tierra Del Fuego” when they saw the tribes’ fires burning along the coastline.

Our guide stated that the Yamana people primarily lived on mussels, seals, and local plants and fungi. The fungus of note is colloquially referred to as pan del indio or “Indian bread.” (Even in South America, the locals refer to native tribes as “Indians.” Columbus’ inability to find India on a map has had far-reaching consequences.)

The Selk’nam were more nomadic and potentially traveled a larger territorial range. They entered into more disputes with European colonizers as the Selk’nam would hunt settlers’ sheep as the Selk’nam hunting grounds were gradually diminished.

We encountered mounds left behind where the Yamana people would live as they migrated around the forest. They may look like grass-covered hills today, but if you dig them up, you’ll find bones, feathers, and other remnants of the Yamana people’s trash.

The Selk’nam people faced genocide after European colonizers reached the area and were extinct by the 1980s. Those early colonizers are said to have found the Selk’nam’s ceremonial costumes and body paint frightening, but in a disturbing turn of events, you can now find images, dolls, and figures of the Selk’nam for sale in every Ushuaia gift shop.

The last woman to speak the Yamana language, Christina Calderon died at the age of 93 in February of 2022. She was the last fluent speaker but purportedly wrote a dictionary among other resources that translate into Spanish in an effort to preserve this history.

A Fun-Guy (Fungi, get it?)

The bright orange balls of fungus, described above as the pan del indio, are parasites living off of the tree’s resources. In response to the infection, the tree grows thick bark in an attempt to distance the fungus from the trunk’s center as much as possible. The inside of the fungus is a gelatinous gook (technical term) which can purportedly be consumed raw. They are low in nutritional and caloric value.

A bearded fellow we met on the tour ate one in front of us and offered one to me. I declined the offer. As a nurse, and despite what anyone may ever tell you otherwise, it is not wise to eat mushrooms you randomly find in the forest. Consuming wild mushrooms has more exceptions than rules, and the cost of the tour does not include a kidney transplant if you eat the wrong kind of mushrooms wandering the forest in a foreign country.

Still, your trek through these forests will have an eerie alien feel to them due to the brightly visible orange spheres plastered over the many trees. It made for a fun and bizarre ambiance.

Dam Beavers

Perry and I saw many similarities between Argentina’s and Chile’s mountains, plains, and deserts and the scenery of Wyoming. It felt like being back at home… if home had bizarre long-necked guanacos and flamingos and alien orange tree blobs.

Another common thing we encounter in our travels is invasive species and the damage they cause. Just about anywhere you go, there is an invasive species (introduced by human intervention more often than not). In Tierra del Fuego, the issue is the dam beavers.

In 1946, Argentina’s government had an idea to establish their own fur trade in Tierra Del Fuego. That old saying, “when man makes a plan, God laughs,” holds true yet again as the dam beavers flourished as intended without any natural predators. They love Argentina.

And because Argentina does not have the harsh winters of the north, they don’t develop a desirable fur pelt and are utterly useless. Argentina is now a welfare state for beavers.

Our tour guide noted that they don’t taste good, they don’t have a usable pelt, and they have decimated acres upon acres of forest. Our rafting trip took us near an older-looking beaver dam. I pointed out to the tour guide and the other patrons that there were beaver traps near the entrances to the beaver dam and an underwater camera. Our guide noted that while this effort is essential, the park rangers don’t operate outside of the park, leaving a lot of beavers unchallenged.

Ancient Egypt had locusts; Argentina has beavers.

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Itinerary

Hotel

We stayed at this Airbnb in Ushuaia for $50/night (fees included). It included a washing machine and drying rack, full kitchen, and everything else you’d need in a studio apartment setup.

Food

• ​Tante Sara - Try the Lomo Tante Sara, a delicious beef tenderloin sandwich.
• ​El Mercado Ushuaia - An all-around solid restaurant serving traditional Argentine food and pizzas. The Matambre al Roquefort con Papas Espanolas is a delicious flank steak stuffed with blue cheese and served with fried potatoes.
• ​Isabel - We had a fantastic Patagonian lamb stew. Pete was a fan.
• ​Dublin - An Irish pub that served fish and chips among other items.
• ​Cafe Martinez - Our choice for a coffee shop. The pricing is a bit high for Argentina, but the ambiance makes up for it.
• ​Bamboo - We didn’t get to try this restaurant, but a few folks on our cruise raved about the Chinese buffet and Argentine grill. Yes, that’s an unexpected combo, and yes, they still raved about it.

Transportation

Ushuaia is a small and walkable town. The only time we needed a taxi was to get from the airport to the main town. We easily hailed a taxi from the taxi stand at the airport. Our ride was metered. If you need a taxi while in town, there are taxi stands marked with signs every couple of blocks in the downtown area.

Ushuaia does have local buses, but we never had a reason to use them. You can find local bus schedules using the Moovit app.

Currency

Ushuaia, Argentina uses the Argentine Peso. Here's how to get cash in Argentina.​

Important Note: Internet in Ushuaia

We tried multiple internet connections and cafes in Ushuaia, and they all maxed out at 2-4 mbps download speeds. It’s fine for checking your email and social media, but we struggled with software updates and media (photo/video) uploads.

Make sure that you’ve uploaded your photos to the cloud, backed up your computer, finished any software updates, and downloaded any books/movies/TV shows before you leave Buenos Aires and arrive in Ushuaia.

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Travel Tip of the Week

Best Travel Shoes: Lightweight Hiking Boots/Shoes

Tierra del Fuego was the first of a series of hikes that rounded out our time in South America. While we may have made it through Southeast Asia in our regular walking shoes, we knew that we were going to need good hiking boots for our plans in Patagonia.

But hiking boots are a bulky, unfashionable pain to travel with.

Enter The North Face’s FUTURELIGHT line.

I love these hiking boots because they’re both lightweight and waterproof. I’m wearing the older model of these (men’s version), but if I could purchase them again, I’d get these ones (men’s version) without the ankle support so they’re a little more fashionable when paired with non-hiking outfits.

I even loved them so much that I kept them as my daily walking shoes for the rest of our trip. Never again will I worry about wet feet in the middle of a monsoon!

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All our love,

Pete and Perry