El Fin del Mundo

Disfrutate! Estas al fin del mundo!

(Enjoy yourself! You're at the end of the world!)

I only have a few more hours at the end of the world. I'm in Ushuaia, Argentina (the southernmost city in the world). It is roughly 1:15 am, and I have to catch a bus to El Calafate, Argentina in less than four hours, and then across the Chilean border to the sleepy port town of Puerto Natales. It should be one of the more pleasant 20 hour bus rides I can think of. Driving across the island of Tierra del Fuego as the sun rises, boarding a ferry to cross the Strait of Magellan, and onward towards some of the most prized peaks in the Andes.

Nice.

This past week in Ushuaia has been one for the books, for sure. The hostel I'm at has easily been the best hostel I've stayed at on this trip. Exceptionally clean, great music, heated floors, friendly staff with great smiles, free breakfast, coffee, tea, $1.50 for a liter of Quilmes, unbelievable views of the Beagle Channel and los Dientes de Navarino (the teeth of Navarino, a jagged Chilean mountain range across the channel). Boating through the Beagle Channel, the same waters Captain Fitzroy and his companion Charles Darwin sailed nearly two centuries ago. But the best thing about this week has been the people I've met here. I bumped into three guys from Calgary my first morning in town, with whom I went trekking in Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego. We got absolutely pounded with rain, but managed to have a pretty deep conversation whilst doing some primetime birdwatching. Three guys I will definitely contact when I find myself in the Canadian Rockies.

My second day I ran into two girls from Salt Lake City, a guy from Philadelphia, a guy from Ann Arbor, and another girl from New Zealand. Some the closest friends I've made inside of 30 minutes. I'm not sure if all of us were relieved to transcend the recycled, surface-level Spanish conversations we've been having, or if we were all supremely compatible. But we fell into one of the friendlier rythyms around within the first few hours. Joking, laughing, asking fairly personal questions without thinking twice. Something usually only good friends do. We spent a few days clambering around the city, traversing the sides of snowy mountain faces and through rainy mushroom forests, and had one giant pot luck dinner. Perhaps the best days of my trip were spent with that group of people marching around Tierra del Fuego.


It's too bad that they all have gone their respective ways already. It would have been nice to have somebody to walk with today... I took a stroll through the woods just north of the city to check out the fall colors. Everything was going well, birds chirping, good weather, good tune in my head, boppin' right along. But as I was nearing the end of my walk, I heard a pretty ferocious bark. I looked up and saw a very hungry dog running at what seemed its top speed directly towards me. The only thing I could think to do was yell "HEY! HEY! HEY!" I thought by making a bit of noise the dog would stop, or at least pause. But what my 'hey hey hey' must have sounded like to him was "I AM MADE OF THE MOST DELICIOUS LEMON PEPPER STEAK AND I WILL DISAPPEAR IF YOU DO NOT CONSUME ME WITHIN THE NEXT 4 SECONDS!" I thought the dog had already been running at top speed, but when I yelled, it picked up its pace at least two fold. I really had no time to respond, so I kind of braced for a big angry dog-pouncing. It came within five or six feet of me and started pacing, barking as aggressively as I've seen a dog bark, showing all of its teeth. Some dogs bark while wagging their tail, showing you that they're making noise but have no real intention of chewing your legs. But this dog had serious intent in its eyes. I've never before been afraid of a dog, but this dog scared the absolute daylights out of me... It somewhat cornered me against a thick patch of trees, and I thought it was going to make its move. I was still about 1 km away from town, so I figured I'd better try to get the dog before it got me. I grabbed my half full nalgene bottle thinking that it would actually impact the dog's behavior if I threw it at him. I raised my arm to throw the bottle, and the dog backed up a few feet. Suprisingly. (Although I have seen dogs back away from a potential rock throw throughout Argentina). I did this a few more times, all the while backing my way down the trail. I kept backing away until the dog was no longer visible behind a bend in the trail and then took off on a dead sprint towards town. I turned around within 5 seconds or so to see the dog sprinting towards me, teeth exposed. I stopped and grabbed a rock, turned around and raised my arm to throw. The dog stopped. This trend continued two more times until I finally threw the rock, missing him by about a foot or so. I collected more rocks and uneasily made my way back home until the dog finally decided that I simply had too many rocks. Given the fact that I was already bitten by a pretty angry dog in Bariloche about two weeks ago, I assumed that this dog would also not hesitate to bite and bite and bite me. I don't know how long the whole ordeal lasted, but I wouldn't put it much over three minutes. And even though I've never before been remotely afraid of a dog, I will say that these were three of the most genuinely frightening minutes of my life.

At least dogs in Patagonia don't have rabies. Or so they say...

Onward to southern Chile!