Argentina 2009

Sunday8November

Finally the time for the big departure has come, but we will have to be patient because we will only arrive tomorrow evening!

So we leave Nantes for Madrid and after a few hours of visits in the Spanish capital we finally take off for our real destination: Buenos Aires! 13 hours of flights anyway...

Monday9November

Jorge Newbery Airport in Buenos Aires

Are we there? Oh no, since the 1st stage of the trip is Ushuaia... So we leave for 5 hours of flight to reach the end of the world!
Well almost because we make a quick landing takeoff in Rio Gallegos.

Finally, we arrive in Ushuaia late in the evening. The hostel Los Cormoranes where we will spend these few days, booked us a taxi upon our arrival at the airport.
Time to drop off our luggage, we run to have a "small" snack in an Irish pub in the city...

Tuesday10November

Our first morning is chilly and cloudy. It's around zero degrees.

And our first task is to pick up our rental car in the city center.

This way we can start visiting the city and head to the "Tierra del Fuego" natural park.

View from the window of our room at the hostel "los Cormoranes".

Left photo, the entrance to the hostel "Los Cormoranes"

Located at the foot of the mountains, Ushuaia is primarily a port from which boats leave for Antarctica.

Mount Olivia.

Tierra del Fuego is the name of this national park but also the name of the province where we are located, the southernmost region of Patagonia. For let us not forget, we are on the "big island of Tierra del Fuego" below the Strait of Magellan and above Cape Horn.

This name Tierra del Fuego ("land of fire" in French) does not mean at all that there are volcanoes!

This name was given by explorers of the time (including Magellan) to describe the fires they saw on the coasts. These fires were lit by the Selknams, Amerindian people of the time, now extinct.

Part of Lake Roca at the foot of Cerro Condor

The Argentine flag in front of Cerro Condor

Cerro Condor

Lake Roca (formerly called Lago Acigami)

A small museum on how the "first" men of Tierra del Fuego lived

Our rental car.

It's lunch break time but we don't hang around because several birds have invited themselves!!!

"It is an eminently scavenging raptor, although it attacks any animal it sees injured or in difficulty, including sheep and even horses. Opportunistic, it uses the strength of the group to attack any prey." © Wikipedia
OOPS! 

A male Upland Goose (Chloephaga picta). We will meet them often in Patagonia.

We leave the car to go walk on the trails.

The only photo of the trip where all 4 of us are!!! And on top of that it's blurry!  

HUSH!!! A Magellanic woodpecker!

Lots of "turbal" or peat in English...

The flora is varied.
Left photo: Misodendrum punctulatum or farol de Chino, plant that parasitizes the tree by pumping its sap
Middle photo: Old man's beard or beard of Jupiter. Anyway, it's lichen...
Right photo: "Pan de Indio" mushrooms.

The sign indicates that national route n°3 ends here.
This road starts from Buenos Aires, which is 3079 km away!

On the left, a female Upland Goose. On the right, black-faced ibises.

Here begins the domain of beavers!

On the left, a beaver dam.

Daylight is fading and we have to go back!
We make a quick detour to El tren del fin del mundo (the train at the end of the world) and hop we leave for Ushuaia!

Second evening at the end of the world...
The meager rice meals in the depths of Vietnam are far away...