For The Love of Travel

Cloudy, sleeting, howling wind on my arrival into Ushuaia. Caught a ‘sight seeing bus’ around town. A brief history of the township (pop 80,000):

The Selk’nam Indians also called the Ona, first arrived in Tierra del Fuego (Land of Fire) about 10,000 years ago. The southern group of the Selk’nam, the Yaghan (also known as Yámana), occupied what is now Ushuaia, living in continual conflict with the northern inhabitants of the island.

A Portuguese expedition led by Magellan in 1580 ended in an armed confrontation with the Selk’nam, the beginning of a complex relationship between indigenous people and Europeans until colonization practically exterminated them. 

Ushuaia was founded informally by British missionaries, long before Argentine nationals or government representatives arrived on a permanent basis. The British ship HMS Beagle, under the command of Captain Robert FitzRoy, first reached the channel in 1833.

The Argentinians claimed claim In 1872, with the hoisting of the flag on the arrival of Commodore Augusto Laserre, commander of the expeditionary division of the Argentinian Navy to the South Atlantic. In 1885, Ushuaia became the capital and seat of the Government of Tierra del Fuego. 

In an effort to attract permanent residents from Argentina to settle in this remote area,  a penal colony was established, modelled on Tasmania’s! In 1896 the prison received its first inmates, mainly re-offenders and dangerous prisoners transferred from Buenos Aires, but also some political prisoners. They became forced colonists and spent much of their time building the town from timber from the forest and a railway to the settlement (the “End of the World” train).

Today, there is a base for the Argentinian navy; population growth has been encouraged by declaring Tierra del Fuego a tax free zone. Ushuaia has developed  infrastructure for both residents and tourists including a fully functional hospital, international airport, educational institutions and a public transport system. The cost of living however, is relatively high, as all goods have to be transported long distances, usually by container ship.

Checked out Trip Advisor re places for dinner and was very glad I selected “Kaupe”, and had a delicious King Crab cooked in a cream, onion, tomato, mustard and pepper sauce. Yummo!! And it’s location is on a hill, with sweeping views over the Beagle channel. Looking forward to catching up with sailing chums tomorrow – we rendezvous at the airport before being taken out for a catamaran lunch on said channel. Then its off to Antartica! Woo hoo!

The wind is harsh and biting – on the road from El Calafate to El Chaltén, I had to dig out my buff and beanie from suitcase on the way, to be able to jump out of the car and take photos, with the face being protected. Chilly!!!!

El Chaltén is on Viedma Lake, the northern end of Los Glaciares National Park in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina. It was built in 1985 to help secure the disputed border with Chile. Today the sole reason for its existence is tourism. “Chaltén” is a tehuelche word meaning smoking mountain, as the indigenous believed the peak was a volcano, being mostly covered by clouds. 

Its a climbing and trekking mecca, with extraordinary peaks like Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy.  Travelling into the area – all the peaks are shrouded in mist. I went out to grab a late lunch and was soon surrounded by young fit ones coming back disappointed with their efforts that morning, as there was little vista to behold. They were sharing instagrams from friends who had done the various climbs yesterday in perfect sunshine! Talk about climb envy!

But the next day, all was good again – brilliant weather, and all of us went out early to seize the moment (you never know when nature will turn).  All the peaks are glistening with ice and some clouds drift in between and over the peaks – MAGIC!!    

I decided to do an ‘easy’ 100m ascent to the Mirador Los Condores – 3 hours return trek with a few steep bits. Mental note: Voltaren night again!

There are a number of points along the walk when condors swoop down and they are away into the Río Fitz Roy valley, before I get a chance to pull out the camera. Awesome to watch them in action though. And what a lovely view to the imposing granite peaks of Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy and associated glaciers. Really enjoyed that walk.

Then off to catch a catamaran to see my last glacier in this National Park – the largest one in Argentina, the Viedma glacier, on Viedma lake. Gorgeous little glacier floes on the water with pretty blue hues as we approach the ‘hero of the sail’….yep, pretty lovely but nowhere as gorgeous as Perito Moreno or impactful as Spegazzini. Still, worth the trip.   I was so happy that I got to see such beautiful vistas, so lucky that the weather improved on the one day I was visiting!!! The stars have been aligned for me for a month!

And to cap it all off, I spied a (somewhat rare) guanaco surveying their hinterland early in the morning on my return trip to Calafate. Perfect!

A day of bumming around town…..

The history of El Calafate began in the first decades of the twentieth century. Originally, it was simply a sheltering place for wool traders. The town was officially founded in 1927 by the Argentinian government to promote settlement, but it was the creation of the nearby National Park in 1937 that sparked growth and the building of better road access.

El Calafate’s source of income is glacier and wildlife tourism, and it became transformed, during Mr Kirchner’s period as provincial governor, when the government built an airport in 2000.  The quickly booming town ran a programme that sold small lots of inexpensive land to local residents who intended to build houses or businesses. Some 3,000 had filled out the paperwork and were waiting for approval, but after Néstor Kirchner moved into the presidential offices in 2003 priorities changed. 

(Néstor Carlos Kirchner served as President of Argentina from 25 May 2003 until 10 December 2007. Kirchner’s four-year presidency was notable for presiding over a dramatic fall in poverty and unemployment, following the economic crisis of 2001, together with an extension of social security coverage, a major expansion in housing and infrastructure, higher spending on scientific research and education, and substantial increases in real wage levels). 

BUT, there were always issues about corruption that followed him and wife.  

Mr Kirchner, his wife, and some 50 other government functionaries found themselves front of the line and were awarded large plots of land in preferential locations at very low prices. In the most famous case, Néstor Kirchner bought two hectares near the town’s old airstrip for $50,000, then sold the lot to the Chilean Cencosud supermarket conglomerate for $2.4 million two years later. 

The view is that he enriched himself dramatically by mixing private and state business. Until 2003, Kirchner had no property in El Calafate. Now the Kirchner’s run 60 to 70 per cent of the economic activity in the town.

Much of the town is typical of Patagonia, with dirt roads and nondescript houses with wriggly tin roofs. Here is a sample…

But at Los Sauces, a hotel the Kirchners built on one of the parcels of land they bought near the mountain waters of Lago Argentino, the advantages of privilege are clear.

His wife, Cristina Elisabet Fernandez de Kirchner, and often referred to by her initials CFK, an Argentine lawyer and politician, took over as President from 2007 to 2015.  She was the second woman to serve as President of Argentina, after Isabel Martinez de Peron, 1974–76.

The new Argentinian President Mauricio Macri said he wants to start a “new kind of relationship” with Britain over the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) as he tries to move his country towards a centrist position in world affairs. Macri said he would continue to press Argentina’s claim to sovereignty, but he hoped the mood of ‘dialogue could change’.