I clogged a toilet at the bottom of the world

Imagine if you will a city that bills itself as the bottom of the world. I picture it as a barren spit of land pounded by constant surf, complete with faded wooden signposts and weathered farmers who just bought their first telephone last year. Well it´s not.

Ushuaia is difficult to spell, pronounce, get to. The bus leaves at 7am. Less than an hour into the journey (and before the riveting ending to the reknowned film Gene Generation), the bus pulls over to the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. Down here the middle of nowhere is remarkably easy to determine, as you can see for literally ten kilometers in every direction: flat empty land, and the small two lane road. Another bus stops on the shoulder and we transfer; the whole process is actually remarkably efficient. A little later, the bus sandwiches itself between trucks on a small ferry. Can´t they build bridges down here, the other shore is only a 15 minute ride away? Well in fact the ferry takes us across the Strait of Magellan, which is sort of a big deal. The southern shore is the large island of Tierra del Fuego, almost insignificant on your world map, and split down the middle into a half for Chile and another for Argentina. The border crossing is one of the slowest so far, one of those fifteen-people-in-the-room-but-only-two-working places, where grumpy gendarms with names like Serge and Sanchez must be pondering their lives spent stamping passports and scanning luggage for dangerous produce. We arrive in Ushuaia at dark. What a day.

The city is beautiful. You look one way and there are snow-capped mountains. In the other direction there is nothing but sea and more snow-capped mountains in the distance (apparently my impression of a location is based on pretty simple criteria). The town sits on the hill in between, ending at the foot of forests turned orange and red as autumn arrives.

Okay so Ushuaia isn´t really the furthest place south in the world. Cape Horne is actually on a series of island quite a few kilometers away. But there is a small town called Puerto Williams that is just a little further south across the channel, in Chilean territory. Ushuaia has the stronger markering department, is the port of call for all Antarctic bound journeys, and is the only thing big enough to be called at city in the area. In fact, it betrays what Jerry Bruckheimer would make you believe the end of the world should look like: there are 64,000 residents here, brand names, big grocery stores, paved roads, a casino, and a pretty high quality of life. In fact, it would be a nice place to live other than the fact that you´d never have any friends from out of town call saying, ¨hey I´m in the neighbourhood, mind if I pass by?¨

The first night (and every subsequent night actually) we went to an Irish pub called Dublins and got a-talkin´ with a fairly drunk French captain. He was leaving the next day with a group on a 20+ day sailboat ride to Buenos Aires. I ask him how much it would cost to get to Puerto Williams, since I´ve heard it´s an expensive endeavour, a $200 USD endeavour. He says it´ll cost a bottle of rum each. Sounds like a good idea and we cheers over the idea. The whole thing has a Mos Eisley spaceport feel to it, especially with the life-sized R2-D2 in the entranceway.

The next day, Julian and I talk ourselves out of the trip, blaming the previous night´s ambition on the beer. We are both meeting friends later, and worry about getting stranded on the island with no way back, even if we were willing to pay the money. Manou (who we knew from the Navimag) and her friend David spend the day preparing customs paperwork, deciding to embark on the journey.

Rain comes and goes, and I spend the day inside, slightly lamenting having declined the adventure. It turns into a ¨planning day¨ which you are permitted in the travelling world if you are on the road for a few months. People usually justify the decision with ¨I just need a day to relax, you know¨. Eventually I can´t take another page of the Lonely Planet and head out to the museum in an act of desperation. It turns out to be a great choice, full of juicy tidbits on the age of exploration, the old penal colony, and Antarctica. The building is an old prison, meaning I also get to fulfill my desire for prison pictures. Most interesting was stuff on the Yamana people, indigenous folk who were regarded by all the explorers as the lowest form of life on the planet. Incidently, there is only one living Yamana left, and she of course lives in Puerto Williams. Damn.

Ushuaia is a very expensive place to eat and drink, and do just about anything. I imagine it will only get worse, as all the people who haven´t been to Antarctica realize they need some pictures of penguins and seals and fly down here to shell out the big bucks. I did what I do best and went out hiking in the mountains north of town, for the first time in a while encountering deep snow. The wind howled like a beast, stinging any exposed skin with icy rain and threatening to knock me over on the rocky slopes. On the way home I tried taking a different trail, ending up cutting across a marsh and then a totally unfamiliar forest tract. Lost in Patagonia with wet socks, it doesn´t get much more authentic than that.

The bus out of Ushuaia was set to leave at 5am. Obviously that meant that we would check out of the hostel the day before and drink through the night at everyone´s favourite Irish pub. We tried to contact Manou who had been gone in Puerto Williams for three nights. Turns out they were stranded in the small town, hampered by customs and bad weather. David had missed his flight and there was no guaranteed exit even the next day. Am I smug about the whole thing? Maybe a little. I collapsed in the bus as it left the bottom of the world, the beginning of my long trek back home, content with an Ushuaia stamp in my passport and a significantly lighter wallet.