I landed in Ushuaia about 3 hours ago. It`s really really beautiful. It only hit me a little while ago how far south I am, that is, farther south than here is a small Chilean army post and then nothing to Antartica, which I`m hopefully going to visit someday too. Ushaia`s a really pretty port town at the very bottom of Tierra del Fuego with about 50,000 people. Walking down the street earlier it struck me how happy the people seemed to be. It could be because it`s Friday night, but I`d like to think it has something to do with being in a small town and therefore not having the New York City complex of living in a big city and feeling like a nobody and being all xenophobic, like, well, Buenos Aires. But Buenos Aires wasn`t that bad, so maybe the people here really are good and happy.
So tomorrow I`m gonna buy me a tent finally which I`ll take advantage of at numerous cheap camp sites and national parks to save money on my route back to Santiago. Plus a fuel canister for my camping stove, a little grub, then bright and early Sunday morning I`m off by bus to Tierra Del Fuego national park for a night and lots of hiking to work off all those french fries, errr, freedom fries that`ve been hanging around my gut lately. I`ve heard great things about this park, so if it ends up sucking I`ll have a bone to pick with a few backpackers back in Buenos Aires but I don`t think it`s gonna be like that. It looks like next Tuesday I`m going by bus to Glaciers National park by way of Rio Gallegos, which scares me a little because there`s a chance I won`t get to go back to Puerto Natales without some severe backtracking. I promised myself I`d take some photos of the boat graveyard but I don`t think I`m gonna let myself down since I`ll probably have to hitch through there to get to the Camino Austral to arrive in Aisèn. Isn`t this wonderful? I`ve been waiting for this trip for goddamn ages. I kinda wish I had a cigar to smoke, all triumphant and shit like those guys in Independence Day. yea, bitches.