7 days in Ushuaia...

Arriving at Hostel Antarctica, Ushuaia (a most excellent hostel) there is an ancient Honda CB175 parked outside. Turns out the young American owner has just ridden it from Connecticut in 3 months, I am once again amazed !! (and slightly shamed), and this is on a small bike too. He has just sold it to the guy who delivers beer to the hostel ! a positive sign for me. The hostel has a large back garden, so the first morning, everything goes through the wash while I clean my bike (wearing just my "bathers" and a Bolivian t-shirt that I don´t trust to be washed with anything else). The bike comes up really well and looks almost new.

And so begins a period of reajustment where I realise that Ushuaia, the promised land,  is just a normal place, it does not levitate in the clouds ! And the hostel is full of "normal" backpackers. For me, it´s something of a "luxury holiday" following the rigors of Patagonian motorcycle touring. Backpackers from the hostel are rapidly coming and going and only staying 1-2 days, I feel a bit like a static object in a "time lapse" video...

Snow at the hostel...

My first priority was to get the bike fixed ASAP, this is an irritation really, as I was planning to sell it. The hostel helps me find a moto garage, and they fit a new clutch for a reasonable $75, so I´m soon buzzing round town again. But this takes 3 days, unfortunately, missing the only enthusiastic pillion passenger I ever found, by a few hours (she left on a cruise). The other priority was to finish my blog. This was frustrating as the hostel had just one PC and everyone wanted to use it !

Any attempts at tourism in Ushuaia were stifled by the weather, it was uniformly terrible for my first 6 days, having broke on the day I arrived (previous post). And thanks to the weather it´s 7 days before I can take my "Everything I Took" photo in the back garden (link above). The temperature in Ushuaia rockets up and down during the day, by 10 deg or so and often the weather changes completely in just 15 minutes.


Almost everyone in the hostel is going to Antarctica !!  One of the big reasons for me coming here was to explore the possibilities of getting to that elusive continent !!  I am very keen to get there but I´m also keen to get a "bargain" ! After just a few hours "research" (talking to some of the agents in Ushuaia) it becomes apparent that this year there are not going to be the bargains that were available last year (I talked to some girls, in Ecuador, in May, who got bargains here, a year ago, exactly this week). With that in mind I chose my ship & cruise carefully and settled for the MV Ushuaia, departing Ushuaia on 13th Nov, for 10 days, and Booked It !!

In the hostel I met a Spanish couple, Marcial and Gabriela, I´m in their blog http://siemprehaciaeloeste.com ! they have some simply gorgeous pictures on there....