Pichilemu is almost straight across the Pacific Ocean from Sydney, and several surf championships are held at Punta de Lobos, the long beach just south of the town. We saw signs claiming that it’s the ‘surf capital of the world’, but a few places claim that, so ….. hmmm.  It is regarded as having the best surf in South America all year round. The beach has grey sand, which is a bit disconcerting to look at, but you realise it’s not dirty when you actually stand on it. In the usual Chilean way, access to the beach is not easy – most of it is blocked by private properties, but there is an access road at the far south of the beach, with some parking, but on a busy day it would be total chaos, I think.

We booked an Airbnb ‘beach condo’ for the last 3 nights of our trip, with just an overnight stop in Santiago before we fly home. It gave us a chance to stop in one place for a while and not do much, which was a very good thing as we both got gastro, thankfully not at the same time. And thankfully we’ve both recovered, in time to face 3 days of plane travel to get home.

The morning we left to drive to Santiago, we stopped at the main street to try and find the stainless steel bowls and cup we lost in the Great Rio Bravo flood. Most of the shops were not open at 10.30am, but we found a cup in a bazar (we’d call it a $2 shop), and the bowls in an open-air market a couple of streets from the main drag. Along with the best quality fruit and vegetables we’ve seen the whole trip. And we didn’t buy any of them. However on the way back to Santiago, there were a lot of roadside stalls selling strawberries, other berries, whole watermelons and tomatoes, so we stopped to get some fruitillas strawberries for Greg.   I picked the smallest container (which was not very small at all!), it cost 2,000 pesos AUD$4, and the woman then opened the container and crammed a couple more handfuls in it! There must have been at least 1.5kg of strawbs, and they were delicious! I’m not keen on fruit apart from pomegranates, and even I ate quite a few!

We thought about eating out somewhere here, but all the Trip Advisor top-rated restaurants had fairly standard ‘international cuisine’ menus, and the more authentic Argentinian places had such terrible reviews that we weren’t confident about eating at any of them.  Also: dinner here is usually at around 10pm, which is a bit late for us. So instead we bought some rump steaks from the supermarket and cooked them ourselves … twice! Excellent meat, around $14 per kg. The other night I poached a double chicken breast on the bone, then cooked lentils in  the poaching liquid, sauted some onions and carrots and mixed it all with some Moroccan spice that I’d brought from home. I always travel with a few spices in little ziplock bags.

There were a lot of ships docked here yesterday – a couple of cruise ships, a couple of Antarctic vessels, a lovely 3-masted sailing ship and the National Geographic Explorer, which is now heading east past Puerto Williams. Greg found a great website for keeping track of what’s in port and where ships are located – Marine Traffic. I think if I lived near a shipping port, I could become whatever the maritime equivalent of a ‘train-spotter’ is.

We walked down to the dock, past lots of tourists and a few locals who had brought their folding chairs down to watch the goings-on. Then along the sea front for a while. We have been lucky with the weather in Ushiaia – sunny days, apart from some rain this morning, but it’s fine again now.

As we drove here, we saw a nice-looking camping area near a lake, so we’re planning on staying there tonight, then back into Chile tomorrow for a while. We had intended visiting Punta Arenas, which is a few hundred kms north and west of here, in Chile, but it seems to be just another shipping port, so we’ll give that one a miss and head straight to Puerto Natale, and national parks, mountains, glaciers.

See you in a day or so!

We drove into the world’s southern-most city yesterday afternoon. The city is built around Ushuaia Bay, which is magnificent. We’re staying in an Airbnb apartment for a few days. It’s in the middle of town, and a block away from the port. There’s a cruise ship in dock – the Costa Luminosa (sister ship of the Costa Concordia, which sank a few years ago) – we can see it from the apartment.

I’m still having to remind myself that we’re actually in Tierra del Fuego Land of Fire. That magical, mystical, legendary, other-worldly, out of reach place at the end of the world El Fin del Mundo. We’re here! Amazing.

After driving through flat steppe for days, the last hundred or so kms got interesting – mountains, lakes, a bit of snow on some mountaintops. We had to drive over a steep pass to get to Ushuaia, and it reminded me a bit of Yosemite National  Park.

Lovely weather here at the moment. Hardly any wind, sunshine, blue sky, calm sea, forecast maximum temp 19c today, with rain later in the week. Sunrise is at just after 6am, sunset is 9.30pm, so they have long days at this time of the year. Ushuaia is at 54°48′S, 68°18′S, which is almost as far south as you can get by car. There is an inhabited island, Isla Navarino, across the Beagle Strait to the south with 2 settlements, Puerto Williams and Puerto Navarino, but they can only be reached by sea.

We went to the local supermarket last night to get a couple of things. The place was packed, and all 12 cash registers were open, with long queues. We bought a litre of cheap white wine, a bottle of soft drink, 200g butter and some carrots. Total cost – AUD$6.  The quality of most of the fruit and veg was better than we’ve seen in a while. Stuff gets shipped or flown here.

A couple of interesting snippets about the Costa Luminosa – it was one of the 3 cruise ships we saw when we were in Rio, and we watched it sail south to Buenas Aires when we sat sipping cocktails on Copacabana Beach one evening. It’s heading to Chile, so we may see it again in Punta Arenas or Puerto Natales, but I think it will be faster than us, though. It’s due in Santiago around Feb 15th.

We don’t have to be back in Santiago until March 2nd, and plan on taking our time heading north. We zoomed straight down here and will stop and see some stuff on the way back.

We’re in Argentina – crossed the border yesterday afternoon. The Chilean side was fine, the Argentinian side was complete chaos … cars, trucks, people everywhere, huge queues to go through Immigration and then Customs. It took us about 90 minutes, but all our papers were in order (thank heavens for that!), and we finally got through at around 6.45pm. The border crossing closes at 7pm, and cars and people were still arriving, so we’re not sure what happened to them, whether it actually stayed open longer, or they had to stay there overnight. We have found that saying ‘no habla Espagnol’ – I don’t speak Spanish – at the start of any potential conversation, makes it easier for everyone, and usually makes for a quicker transaction as there’s no chit-chat.

We stayed at a campground by a glacial lake north of Bariloche last night. Argentinians are keen campers and love lighting fires! A bit like South Africans. We’re in Bariloche at the moment, it’s Sunday and we’re not sure what’s open, but we’ll find out soon.

My Airbnb account was hacked a day or so ago, and the hacker had made a booking at a (probably non-existent) LA apartment for 2 days at the princely sum of AUD$4k! The host’s account was also hacked.  Airbnb were quick to refund me and cancel the booking, so it all worked out okay. Anyone reading this with an Airbnb account, make sure your password is good, or change it.

For Ron: sorry there are no songs, the internet is far too slow, but I’d probably add ‘Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina’ to this post if I could!