By 8 am on 17^th February I was walking up the main road out of Rio Grande towards the southern exit of the town. From what I had read, hitchhiking in Patagonia is reasonably easy. After waiting for 45 minutes a black pickup truck stopped and offered to take me part of the way to Ushuaia. I sat in the open back – it was a bit cold, but I had a perfect view of the arid Patagonian wilderness as we rattled along the gravel road towards the south.  Part of the way there I heard a sudden flapping noise and we stopped suddenly by the side of the dirt road with a flat tyre. While the wheel was getting changed, I chatted to the other occupants, who were locals heading for a lake called Lago Fagnano to spend the day.

We duly reached Lago Fagnano and I was dropped near a lakeside hotel called Hosteria Kaiken. I was surprised to see the letter “k” used, since use of “k” in Spanish is very limited. The main road went uphill with a nice scenic view of the lake.

I walked for a pleasant half hour, before a nice family stopped and squeezed me into the back of their Renault 12.  We stopped a few km further up at the Garibaldi Pass (a high point on the road over to Ushuaia) to take photos looking back at Lago Escondido (“hidden lake”).

After another spectacular hour driving through the hills, we reached Ushuaia, which is dramatically located on a narrow strip of land between the snow-capped mountains to the north and the Beagle Channel to the south. For all its remote position at the tip of the Americas, Ushuaia is a proper city – the world’s most southerly.  The slightly more southerly, and very isolated, Chilean port of Puerto Williams is a small fraction of the size of Ushuaia.

I walked 1 km out to the airport to ask about flights north (that’s the only direction scheduled flights go from here!!). However the airport was “closed” and they had little useful information.  They said it would reopen the following day – I wanted to check if there was a reasonably priced option to fly north to the town of Rio Gallegos (on the mainland) since doing so would save me a full day of backtracking overland.

The helpful tourist information office arranged for me to stay with a local family in their house, which was a refreshing change from cheap hotels and backpacker hostels.  After a quick change of clothes, I arranged a ride in a Kombi to the Tierra del Fuego National Park – 20 km to the west. This beautiful area contained several things claiming – rather questionably – to be the “most southerly in the world”.  This included the “most southerly tree”, and the “most southerly lake”, though I had some cake in what is no doubt the world’s most southerly tea shop.

Once I’d hiked in the park for a couple of hours, I started walking back down the road towards Ushuaia. Soon a car stopped, and “Maria” from Buenos Aires offered me a ride in her Citroen 2CV, which bounced along the rough roads while Maria asked all about my travels.  Back in Ushuaia, and feeling hungry, I realised that such dramatic isolation doesn’t come cheap – even a bowl of lentil soup with bread cost more than what had been my daily food budget in the rest of South America.

In the morning (18^th February) I went to the office of LADE – the state owned airline – but was told they only had standby tickets out of Ushuaia.  That wasn’t the only setback – the wretched Swiss Queue Jumpers were there – they saw me, and they shot me a dirty look.  The office of Aerolineas Argentinas also had only standby tickets available, but they seemed to think there was a good chance I would get on a flight.  I bought a ticket which was, at least, very cheap, at $18. 

After packing I headed to the airport to check-in and was told I was number 6 on the standby list.  That didn’t sound too promising…  There were still a couple of hours before the flight, so I wrote some postcards and quickly walked back to the town to send them – there was a certain kudos for sending postcards from the world’s most southerly city, and I still found it amazing to look at a map of the world and see where I was!

The excitement mounted as the incoming plane came into view and landed (not least because the scary alignment of the single runway means that planes have to land at Ushuaia with a mountain directly in front of them). Would I get on the flight?  The minutes ticked by… The flight was already halfway through boarding and there were still 3 people on the standby list in front of me.  Boarding finished and it looked hopeless – I would surely have to spend the whole of the following day on a long bus and ferry trip, crossing the border twice… then suddenly they called my name!  I was on the flight!! It was desperately exciting…  Within 2 minutes of believing I wasn’t going to fly, I was on the 737, which 5 minutes later was taxiing out for its scary take-off.

By coincidence I was sitting next to a British couple – he was a doctor in the Royal Navy and had been travelling with his wife after a tour of duty in the South Atlantic islands. He told me that even after 9 years, the islanders still haven’t recovered from the shock of what happened in their previously peaceful and forgotten corner of the world.  He said he was also saddened to see the state of decay of the memorials in Ushuaia that honour the fallen Argentinean servicemen.

It was a short hop to Rio Gallegos, and in the airport terminal I was able to buy a bus ticket to the coal mining town of Rio Turbio near the Chilean border.  I had an hour to wait so I sat in the airport café eating a lomito (tender steak sandwich) and getting my diary up to date. It’s curious to think I’ll be at this airport again in about 2 weeks, for the plane to load enough fuel to reach New Zealand…

I got a front seat on the bus to Rio Turbio, and enjoyed the mesmerising expanses of wild rolling featureless Patagonia stretching in all directions. In Rio Turbio I found the bus company that crosses over to Puerto Natales – only 50 km to the south west – and after a short wait I was on the way up to the border. 

There was a slightly awkward moment there – the friendly Argentinean immigration officer was stamping my passport when he looked at my birth date and nationality, thought for a second, and then politely asked me if I’d fought in “Las Malvinas”.  I said I hadn’t, thinking to myself “I was only 19 at the time!”. But he explained that he had indeed fought there because, like me, he was born in 1962 – one of the 2 unlucky birth-years that automatically sent thousands of inexperienced 18 and 19 year old conscripts to the South Atlantic to suffer.

It was dark by the time I reached Puerto Natales, and I found a small hospedaje to stay in, owned by “Elsa”. She offered a nice meal with salmon which was just what I needed. I could finally relax – it has been a long 2 days!  Tomorrow I’m not going anywhere…