At the End of the World

The next morning the sun was shining and melting the snow on the roof of the hostel. I could hear the heavy drops falling onto some sheet metal on the balcony, so I was convinced it must still be raining and therefore it wouldn't be worth getting up.

It was late by the time we set off for the glacier just above town, which was said to be no bigger than a bucket of ice. But before we'd even made it around the corner from the hostel, we'd already decided that we should investigate the options for travelling to Antarctica. One of the guys in our room had finally made up his mind to go and was buying his passage that morning.

As the little map at the port of Ushuaia shows, this is the closest place on earth to Antarctica, with just 1000km of water separating it from the frozen continent. In fact by boat it would only take around 1.5 days to cross the Drake Passage. At least that explains the cold!

Thanks to last minute specials available only in Ushuaia and a strong Australian dollar it at last seemed possible to do something I've always dreamed off but that normally is prohibitively expensive.

We wandered up and down the wharf for a while looking at the jagged peaks of the mountains now covered in a fresh layer of snow. On the other side of the Beagle Channel lay Chile, separating us from Cape Horn just a hundred or so kilometres ahead. In the harbour a National Geographic boat made us yearn for an adventure.

After an hour of wandering we did book a trip, but a significantly shorter one. We decided Antarctica would have to wait for another time.

Our boat trip that afternoon was supposed to take us to a lighthouse on a minuscule island in the middle of the Beagle Channel, as well as a sea lion colony and for a walk on one of the bigger islands. The wind had picked up in the afternoon forming very innocuous looking white caps on the little waves, which made me very happy. Just like turbulence when flying, there is nothing I enjoy more than standing at the front of a boat that's riding the waves. But apparently the port authorities of Ishuaia do not share my idea of fun and had closed the harbour cancelling our boat trip. The guide was at pains to explain to me that given the size of the waves in the harbour, they would be monstrous out in the channel. Like I needed to know the fun I would be missing out on!