A Desolate Drive

On our fourth and final full day in Ushuaia (minus Anna and Casey, who left the day before), we five decided to rent a car and head northward into the main part of Tierra del Fuego with the city of Rio Grande being our target. The overused platitude ended up being correct, however, when the journey proved better than the destination.

Already a strong sense of foreboding came the night before when, just after Hertz employee Sergio ran my card, it began pelting snow outside in the 6pm darkness - our first precipitation we saw in Ushuaia. We had been feeling pretty good about the roads before then, but we heard the mountain passes can get icy and the snow certainly doesn't help. But it was a done deal. Sergio showed us that our manual Chevy Spirit had little metal studs in its winter tires and we then drove it to our hostel.

The Brazilians staying at our hostel were all eating dinner in the loft kitchen upstairs right after we had dinner. Several nights before they had come off as quite rude, hardly talking to us but hiding stifled laughs every time we'd walk by and staring endlessly. I wish I had caught some of the rapid and muffled Portuguese. But as they were beginning dinner and I was washing dishes this night, one member of the group got up to take a photo of the entire group. I leaned over to him and said 'Eu posso tirar uma foto se você quiser…' or 'I can take a photo if you want…' He looked at me startled and incredulously asked (in Portuguese) 'You can speak Portuguese'? To which I responded 'It's the truth…'.

'Wait, that means you heard everything we said last night?'

'That's the truth as well!'

They all laughed, and in the end I feel that we got even with them, having them on edge thinking we understood them the whole time and hopefully making them feel quite awkward about their rudeness. Later on we befriended several of them and they turned out to be quite well-meaning and friendly once our superficial differences were smoothed over. But every learner of a foreign language dreams of that moment that they can turn around to someone who's talking about them in a different language behind their back and say 'Actually, I can speak (insert language here).' This was my first such moment, and it was so incredibly triumphant.

The morning of the drive, we awoke before dawn (i.e. before 10am), breakfasted, and we were off after scraping a layer of rime off the Spirit. The snow had stopped shortly after it started, thankfully. We watched the temperature drop from 3C to -3C over the course of the next hour as we climbed up to Garibaldi Pass. Conditions were foggy, roads were icy, and knuckles were white, but James guided the boaty rental expertly and we were through. On our way down past Lago Escondido and Lago Fagnano we broke beneath the clouds and saw the stark view ahead of us - barren grassland, rocky outcroppings, and a few windswept trees. If our view had been unobstructed by clouds the view just across the pass would have been much more precipitous and terrifying, as shown in the summertime picture below. But those guardrails are strong - on our way back, we saw a car coming toward us a ways ahead lose control around a turn and barrel into a guardrail, miraculously bouncing right off and even ending in a direction facing the way it had been going. We slowed down as we approached and asked if he was alright as he was getting out of his car, which he responded to with a smile and with a "be careful, the roads are icy!" shortly before releasing a wail at his surprisingly minimal rear bumper damage. Hospitality comes first to the Argentines.

We drove through the Fuegian plains for another hour, the former lands of the native Ona Indians (Selk'nam). Theirs was a hunting culture, and we began seeing their former primary prey dotting the roadside and landscape - llama-like creatures known as guanaco. It wasn't long before carmates were referring to them as guano and Guantanamo in the same way that they had called the coatis 'coitus' earlier in our trip in Puerto Iguazu, Argentina. The road suddenly emerged atop a bluff and to our right was the chilling and endless Southern Atlantic Ocean, hazardous with rocks and beach crusted with ice and grainy sand. An incredibly stark landscape to behold. Past Lucas Bridges's Viamonte Estate established in the 1900's we began to see more cattle, horses, and sheep, then buildings, until we had reached the right-angled street grid of Rio Grande.

Rio Grande is an industrial city and is far from picturesque. Our hostel desk hosts, upon being told we were heading up there for the day, could only scrunch their faces and ask "why?" so I suppose we were somewhat expecting this. We passed row after row of telephone pole, light pole, electric pole, and planned houses as we entered the city. It was nearing 1pm, and Argentina was playing Nigeria! Restaurant choices were slim so we chose the first viable option we saw, an events center on a side road. Despite the place being almost empty yet set up for a banquet, we sat down at a table near the three other customers in the room and fixed our attention on the small TV mounted to a pillar nearby. A cheap lunch of stew, bread, Tang, and Jello got us through the first half, and it was fun celebrating an Argentina goal with this ragged crew. At halftime, however, our waiter told us that if we wanted to get back to Ushuaia before darkness we ought to leave stat. Not wanting to try the icy roads and pass again in the dark, we unfortunately had to leave at halftime. Car horns were honking on our way out of the city as Argentina scored two more goals.

Jeff driving now, the three hours back were even more beautiful on the return in the dimming light, and we even got a rare five minutes of sunshine as we rounded the desolate and mysterious Lago Fagnano. The pass was better on the return, although shortly after summiting is when we saw the car nearly plummet off the side of the road. We drove past Cerro Castor, the world's southernmost ski resort which was sadly not opening until the day after we left. They were making snow like crazy. We also drove past the place we had dog-sledded and snowshoed the day before.

Back into Ushuaia we made our own meal, packed a bit, played hearts, and then Jeff and I stayed up until 5:30am singing and talking with Brazilians, Uruguayans, and Argentinians in the common room of our hostel. They sure love their Rihanna and Adele - much lyric-searching was done. We got the chance to try Fernet, an apparently hugely popular liquor in Argentina. Reminded me of spiced Jagermeister. 

The morning of our flight back, we ducked over to the End of the World Museum to get our last bit of Ushuaia cultural emersion. Haunting and sad, overall, seeing how quickly a culture up and vanished due to the ignorance of Europeans. The last native-speaking and pureblood Yahgan is 90 years old and living on Navarin Island. The last Ona died in the 70's, I believe.

Our flights went:

Ushuaia -> Buenos Aires (3.5 hours, two-aisled plane)

3.5 hour layover

Buenos Aires -> Houston (10.5 hours, United two-aisled plane, no drinks despite international :/ )

3.5 hour layover (customs)

Jeff flew to Denver, Austin flew to Chicago, James, Lauren, and I flew…

Houston -> Dallas (1 hour, 50 seat puddle-jumper)

9 hour layover (picked up by our friend Keeley and went into the city for a bit)

Dallas -> Denver (2 hours)

Our friends Gus and Laura picked us up, dropped us off in Fort Collins, and I don't think I've slept that hard in a while. But that still didn't stop us from waking up at 7am: sunrise in Ushuaia (where it was 10am, three hours ahead), but the sun already up for an hour and a half in Colorado.

We went to the Fort Collins farmer's market and immediately ran into a man with a FIFA World Cup t-shirt and then a woman from Belo Horizonte selling Brazilian sweet rolls. Cue the Portuguese and vivid nostalgia. We already can't wait to return, and would gladly live there some day if given the opportunity. Saudade - look it up.