Exploring the end of the world in Ushuaia (14-17 May 2012)

Landing in Ushuaia was quite breathtaking with snow capped mountains on one side and the Beagle Channel on the other, and we straight away knew that the year of winter had properly started.

We only spent 2 ½ days in Ushuaia but we loved this cute little town with the most incredible surroundings! The first night I enjoyed an all-you-can-eat asado with the most amazing flame grilled lamb, beef and chicken. Rich just had a plate of pasta and he had to watch me eat for quite a while since I made sure that I ate all I could – and a little more... The meat in Argentina definitely is amazing!

The next day we got up at sunrise (9.30am!) and went on a little boat trip around the Beagle Channel where we got to admire sea lions, fur seals, cormorans and a whole lot of other sea birds. Since I’m a big penguin fan, Rich had arranged for three penguins to swim by and say hello. Unfortunately the rest of their gang had already travelled up to Brazil for a nice warm winter holiday (Rich was considering swimming up with the three penguins but then he decided to give winter another chance)... We also walked around one of the smaller islands of Tierra del Fuego and learnt about how the indigenous Yaghan people lived in this hostile environment. To our surprise they did not wear any clothes but just covered their bodies in grease from sea animals and gathered around fires. So when the first boats arrived from Europe they saw lots of fires on the islands and therefore gave Tierra del Fuego/Land of Fires/Feuerland its name. But it’s really hard to understand how anyone could survive at these temperatures without many layers of clothes and central heating, and the poor Yaghan women even had to swim in the freezing water to dive for shells and fish! Unfortunately now only one Yaghan woman is left. I’m sure she would have some incredible stories to tell. ..

In the afternoon we went to the Ushuaia Prison, which is now a museum filled with displays and information about Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica, expeditions, the Yaghan people and the prison history. Seems like the convicts who got sent to Australia back in  the 18^th /19^th century got a great deal compared to what was waiting for prisoners who got sent to Ushuaia between 1904-1947. One part of the prison hasn’t been renovated and still looks the way it did when it was in use. Again we where astonished how anyone could have survived in these temperatures... and it’s only the beginning of winter right now...

The next day we went to the Tierra del Fuego National Park to go on a little hike in preparation of what was going to follow. The colours down here are beautiful at the moment and this is definitely one of the many advantages of travelling through Patagonia in autumn/winter. 

You’ll find about the other advantages in the next post...

More photos of Ushuaia here: https://picasaweb.google.com/109362659982164453049/UshuaiaBest_of?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCL3Bm9Ch88qE4gE&feat=directlink

Cooling down in Buenos Aires (8-14 May 2012)

A traveller’s life is very busy, therefore I haven’t been able to write about our stops in Buenos Aires and Ushuaia yet. Luckily we’ve got some spare time today since we’re on the way from Ushuaia to Puerto Natales (via Rio Grande and Punta Arenas) which takes about 16 hours by bus… I’m now catching up on writing whilst we sit in a little café at the bus stop in Rio Grande (12 hours to go).

So, Buenos Aires: (the long story here, link to photos at the bottom of this post)

After about 22 hours of travelling we arrived in Buenos Aires rather tired but very happy. We had six nights there which meant that we didn’t have to feel pressured to run around all day to see everything. So we were able to sleep in – at least we thought so. We had heard before that Buenos Aires is the city that never sleeps. But we hadn’t realised that this also means that it’s the city that doesn’t let you sleep. It must be the loudest city on earth! Supposedly we stayed in a quiet area but even there the noise from the street only went down from about 5-7am. Other than that the hostel (Chillhouse) was great and we’d definitely recommend it.

We spent the days in Buenos Aires walking through Downtown, San Telmo, Recoleta and Palermo; ate some great steak; and had a much needed Argentinean history/culture/language lesson. Buenos Aires is a massive city and we only saw a tiny fraction of it (the ‘tourist’ section, as far as we understood a lot of the other areas aren’t really safe to visit). What we saw was quite impressive and the architecture around these areas showed how rich Argentina once was (one of the richest countries in the world in the early 1900s). The old, big buildings with high ceilings in some of the areas reminded me of Barcelona and Berlin but the buildings in Buenos Aires seemed to be much more opulent. The main street in the city centre had a very communist feel to it (with about 10 lanes each way), reminding me of another side of Berlin... Other areas looked very similar to Köln (the newly renovated harbour area looked like Rheinauhafen and the shopping mall could be the twin of Hohe Strasse) and Brisbane (the brown river :)). Our definite favourite in Buenos Aires was the cemetery in Recoleta. It was fascinating to walk through the different lanes of vaults and a bit creepy to look into the ones that haven’t been able to hold up that well over the years…

Also fascinating is what you experience when you only speak about 20 words of Spanish… So far the highlight was probably when I tried to find out how much it is to rent two bikes. In VERY broken Spanish I asked the guy at the bike shelter “Cuanto cuesta dos bike” – since I had no idea what the word for bike is. Unfortunately I also had no idea what the guy responded. The only word I understood was ‘no’. I quickly retreated defeated, so taken aback by his response that I didn’t even try to find out what he had said. Two days later we found out that the bikes are free…….. Oh well.... we’ll get there eventually…  

  

So overall we had a great time in Buenos Aires but I’m afraid we don’t love the city. It was just a bit too loud, busy and dirty for our liking. It was a great place to start our trip through South America though, with moderate temperatures and friendly people who were always willing to help us hopeless travellers.

We’ll be in touch soon with updates from Ushuaia and Torres del Paine - where we'll be hiking around the national park for the next three days.
 

Hasta luego,

Charly (& Rich)

More Photos:
https://picasaweb.google.com/109362659982164453049/BuenosAiresBest_of02?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCMnivIKwpZf8oQE&feat=directlink

Heating up in Doha and Dubai (3-8 May 2012)

We’ve been ‘on the road’ for a week now and are still finding it hard to understand that, unlike other holidays, this one won’t end in a couple of weeks... And we definitely won’t complain!'

Our first stops took us to Doha, Qatar and Dubai, UEA where we soaked up some heat to prepare for the Year of Winter.

In Doha, our lovely hosts Ines and Dennis gave us the best possible start to our trip, letting us reside in luxury and showing us the best sights and food of this small desert country. It’s quite an interesting place full of different cultures, construction sites, dust and heat, heat, heat (nice spring temperatures of 42-46 degrees when we were there). Rich wanted me to start working over there straight away, so that he could enjoy the life of an expat-de-facto-husband (even though I don’t think they’d allow a de-facto to come along, since we weren’t even allowed to hold hands). Kind of weird how you can have up to four wives but you can’t even hold hands in public... And this is just one of many contradictions that seem to appear in this part of the world. The Qataris definitely know how to live in style but the thousands of workers who try to construct the many different projects live and work in very different conditions. The wealth of the Qataris is astonishing and their plans for Doha show just perfectly what people do when they have too much money and time... Some of the projects are fantastic (such as the Museum of Islamic Art, the cultural village Katara or Education City) but others seem (are?) totally over the top. The city centre is already full of empty skyscrapers and they are still building more. The same goes with hundreds of big apartment buildings that seem to be popping up everywhere and I don’t really understand who is supposed to live in them. Already the Qataris are outnumbered by foreigners (about 1/5 I think). Do they really want to dilute their culture even more? Would there be jobs for that many more people? What about infrastructure/food/water? So many questions and I’m not sure if they are addressing them when coming up with these projects... Currently many parts of Doha have a strong 'Trueman Show' feel to them but it’ll be interesting to see what Doha looks like in about 15 years. My guess would be that they’ll keep going full steam until the World Cup in 2022 (I still don’t get how this can work in up to 50 degrees)  and afterwards it will either be the next Dubai or full of empty buildings... Anyway, we had a great time in Doha with Ines and Dennis and apart from spending time with them, our favourite parts were the souq (market) where Rich got a nice shave at a barber shop and the fantastic Middle Eastern food! 

After three days in Doha we went on to Dubai, where we spent 1 ½ days strolling through massive shopping malls, admiring the world’s tallest building and a great fountain/light show, catching an abras (little wooden boat) over the Dubai Creek, and running away from pushy merchants at the souq. I think Dubai isn’t too different from Doha – just a little more finished and Western...

To sum it up, we had a fantastic start to our trip and Ines & Dennis made it real special, so: THANK YOU! We felt like kings and it's kind of difficult to now turn into backpackers :) We're doing our best though and are currently enjoying a totally different culture in Buenos Aires. But more about this later. We’re off to our first (and much needed) Spanish lesson...

Besos

Charly (& Rich)

More photos:
https://picasaweb.google.com/109362659982164453049/DohaDubaiBestof?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCMmo-veSrbjpRg&feat=directlink

Ready to go

It's happening! We're actually going to leave Australia tonight...

Ritchie's thesis is submitted and our bags are packed. We'll still be running around like headless chicken today though to run a few last errands and then we'll have a well deserved Schnitzel at the German Club with Ritchie's family, followed by Brisbane's best Espresso Martini with our former and current hosts Sally, Lisa and Ian. Our flight is leaving at 2.30am and I think we'll both fall asleep within a second to make up for the lack of sleep from the last week...

We'll be in touch from the middle east or South America.

Take care and hasta luego,

Charly (&Rich)