Ushuaia is just fun to say! Say it with me now: Ooo-shwy-uh

How is everybody?! It´s been an eventful, what, 3 days or something. Allow me to give you the haps on your man, Stefan.

After a hair-raising third-world mega-city experience in Buenos Aires, I damn near missed my bus because of a faulty watch (or possibly a faulty user). Thanks to a helpful but slightly patronizing waitress and my amazing cardio-vascular health, I booked it to the station and caught the bus as it was pulling away. I figure every international trip needs an experience like that to happen at least once (and hopefully only once), but I damn near freaked out. I did NOT want to stay a single day in Buenos Aires. Imagine you´re on your way to Lake Tahoe and you walk into one of the many scary parts of Los Angeles, and you only know how to speak Italian. That´s how I felt there.

The bus ride to Patagonia was long, but surprisingly a good experience. The buses are double decker, they are modern and comfortable, they have reclining seats, they serve (horrible) food, they have a bathroom that you can´t poop in (only pees), and they play movies. I very much enjoyed ¨The Gaurdian¨, featuring Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher. In Spanish, of course. The middle of Argentina is scary flat. Think Wyoming, but much bigger and with a chapparal look to it. It made me think of a Cormac MacCarthy book (a graceful gloaming, if you will). We would see absolutely nothing for hours. Driving across it was like being hypnotized.

Anyhow, I arrived in Rio Gallegos days later, and since there was another bus leaving for Ushuaia 20 minutes after I arrived, I figure what the hell, right? So, what I thought was going to be a morning jaunt to Tierra del Fuego turned into an 15 hour trek across the most remote and forboding place I have ever been. Unpaved roads, scary Chilean boarder crossings where I didn´t understand a word of the official´s demands, 3 hour bus inspections (no joke, we had 4 border stops), and 1 transfer later, we arrived at the end of the world... Ushuaia.

Frankly, I´ve never been to a place like this. Unbelievably dramatic mountains jut out of the blue-green sea, bizarre flora, glaicers, and Antartica staring at you from across the ocean. I think of Alaska when I look around, but it feels even more remote (though I´ve never actually been to Alaska, so this is all just supposition). Also, I don´t think I´ve seen or overheard a single American, and nobody I have attempted to talk to knows English at all, though there are plenty of tourists. I´ve never really felt so on my own as I do here. Honestly, it´s a bit unsettling, but in an appealing way. I´ve got some ¨getting used to¨ on this trip, but that´s really what its all about.

Today I just hung around town and checked the lay of the land, as it is. Right now, I am staying in a crappy frat-house-esque hostel, but I found a better and cheaper one and will be moving tomorrow. When I arrived last night at close to 11:30 (with the sun setting, I will add), there was absolutely nowhere that had an open bed. It was kind of scary, honestly, walking around a strange town so terribly far away, with all your gear and no knowlegde of where to go to sleep after 4 full days of travel, but I resolved myself and ended up meeting some dude from Brazil that helped me out.

I can hear my mother´s heart thumping from half way around the world, so I better stop here.

So, quick review: charming-but-alien people, other worldly landscape, hiking tomorrow, smelly shoes, woke up to a Korean couple (I think) breaking up, and now craving a beer. I really hope to meet some nice English speaking folk soon, because unlike I claimed in my last post, my Spanish in fact sucks!!