Ushuaia, 24th-31st August

Hello from ´el fin del mundo´, well Ushuaia to me more precise, the worlds most southerly city. In fact that seems to be the general theme here, you can drive the worlds most southerly highway, take the worlds most southerly train, etc etc. I´ve been here a week now, attending Spanish classes in the morning and doing a bit of exploring in the afternoon.

In the first couple of days i didn´t do much apart from visit the maritime/prison museum, which is actually inside the old prison (Ushuaia used to have a penal colony, the kind of place you would rather die then go to). Quite interesting for me as i like the old stories of adventure, back in the day before mobile phones and gps etc, they also had pieces on antarctic exploration, including our numerous ´glorius British failures´like Scott and Schacklton. On Wednesday, i headed out on the obligatory (and therefore expensive), boat tour out on the Beagle channel (on which Ushuaia lies). Darwin, passed through here on the way to the Gallapagos (actually on the second voyage of the Beagle), and kindly described the native Yamanas as ´primitive beings, closer to apes than to us´, not very nice of him really. The main feature of the trip was that it was really damn cold, but visited some nice places like the of course ´lighthouse at the end of the world´, islands with loads of sea lions and birds etc.

Looking back to Ushuaia



Bridges Islands (could be Scotland though......)

As I am the only person in my class at the school, i´ve also been helping with some of the English classes, although all they want to talk about is football really. In fact it was quite funny, cos i set them a writing task and pretty much all the guys wrote about football and all the guys wrote about cheating boyfriends!

Ushuaia....again

Yesterday, i went for a long walk in the parque national tierra del Fuego (about 7 hours in fact). I went all the way to the border with Chile, and even trespassed a little bit, well to be honest there was nothing there but a sign. The park is full of birds, and just before i left, i managed to spot 3 woodpeckers in the trees only a few yards from me, which was pretty special (although apparently they are quite common here).



Me playing the game of standing with
each foot in different countries

Woodpeckers

Today I walked up to the san Martial Glacier, although to be honest you couldn´t actually see it as its quite small and everything was covered in snow anyway. There is 1 chairlift up there so I think I may try and go up again and get a little bit of snowboarding done. well, yep that's about it really. hope to hear from you soon.O

Buenos Aires

San Isidro
San Isidro
Traffic lights in Tigre

PHOTOS NOW UPLOADED!

Well, i´m now in Buenos Aires..but not for long as I will soon be heading off this afternoon. I got here on Thursday and have spent the last few days getting used to being on the road again and trying to explore this city at least a little. Arriving on Thursday morning I was too tired to do much exploring reall, just wandering around near the hostel watching the what seems to the favourite South American past time of blocking the main streets with protests. In the evening there was a bbq in the hostel. Of course this was pretty much entirely just steak, steak and a token bit of salad.Friday was a day for exploring the city (and buying the things that i forgot to bring - charger for ipods etc). I visited the Recoleta graveyard. Basically a huge jumble of tombs, both modern and well kept and also crumbling and ruined. The most famous resident of this graveyard is of course Argentina´s favourite daughter Evita. Later on i went with some friends from the hostel to the Palermo district. Again mainly to eat steak, but also sample some of the Buenos Aires nightlife. I´m not we chose the best of clubs though as they seemed to playing a mix of poor indi rock (with a lead singer who´s lighting technician unfortunately decided to constantly highlight just how shiny his shiny head could be!), and also a very strange guy who pretty much bashed a keyboard with his hands and moaned into his mic something about his Beeeaaby, both with far to much echo effect.Yesterday I again went with friends from the hostel to explore out of the centre of the city. We made it out to one of the outlying rich suburbs called San Isidro, a very nice place to wander and visit the open market. Further out we made it to Tigre, at the junction of several rivers. This is were all of the city folk escape on the weekends and the rivers a are clogged with pleasure boats and hundreds of loads of rowing boats all jostling for space. Today I head to Ushuaia,right down at the southern tip of Argentina . From what i´ve heard it sounds like a pretty stunning place, but I will let you know in due course. O

Beginings

Hello All,

As some of you may know, i'm going away for a while to South/central america for a wee adventure in a few days. As I have not left yet, i don't really have much to say yet i'm afraid. I'll try and update this page reasonably often, i'm doing it instead of writing emails (which some of you may have got in the past). As you can see i have an e-map (all very hi-tech), on which i will be charting my progress.

Please stay in touch by email at oli.warlow@gmail.com , as its always really appreciated to hear from anyone. Hope to see you when i get back