Hiking the National Park Tierra de Fuego

  Ushuaia, Patagonia, Argentina
Sunday, February 15, 2009

Since Linda had to leave the next day we decided to enjoy the night out and went to an typical Argentinian BBQ restaurant - nothing could have prepared us for it. Inside the restaurant there was a huge grill - seperated through glass the guests could watch 4-5 lambs, pigs etc. being grilled (the whole thing! - not just the parts) - for chicken and beef there was a seperate grill, which dimensions also were quite fascinating ...

Since there was a great offer from our hostel for free entry to a club right on the other side of the street we planned to go there afterwards - being unable to move though that plan delayed for a couple of hours :) ...
The club was very nice - although you have to get used to the way Argentinians go out (we didn't believe it when were told that the clubs are empty till 3 :)) - anyway we went there at 12.00 and besides two handful of people the club was empty as foretold - At 2.40 the Club started to fill and at 3.00 (am) it was full till the roof :) ...


The next day Nicola and me planned to the national park. The National Park Tierra del Fuego is extremely nice and well kept - you could spend 2 days in there and camp (the area open to public is quite small - we hiked through the whole park in less than a day) - I'd recommend that if you have the choice to visit the national park during the week since it gets a little crowded on weekends (at least the camping/grilling areas) . Only on the short routes we met a couple people - the longer ones seemed quite empty ... Even though we have midsummer here Ushuaia can get a little chilly - at the end of our hike (+/- 7 hours) we could see our breath and we were quite happy to sit in the bus back to town when it started raining :). From the wildlife the Park was quite fascinating - we could watch a huge beaver damn (didn't see a beaver though :( (1.2 meters and 25 kilos!!), dozens of woodpeckers, a fox, at least a million bunnies (they seem to be quite a plague in Ushuaia), birds of prey etc. ...