We flew into Ushuaia, the bottom of the world, and wondered why there was still so much more land further south? But, this town has the claim to fame being the most southern town of note, and we wanted to tick the box to say we had been there.

We caught a taxi to our accommodation, a cool little loft cabin built in the yard of a lovely family, only a few blocks from the main street of town. We didn't do much for the afternoon, just relaxed in our cool little abode and got some groceries.

The next day we had a nice lazy day as well. It was Lindsay's birthday and we just wanted to take it easy, plus we had a few wines the night before. We had decided doing a boat tour was a little cost prohibitive but went for a nice walk along the waterfront and warmed up with a hot chocolate.

For dinner that night, we decided to really treat ourselves. We went to a restaurant and each ordered a delicious steak, Fergus going all out with a 400 gram slab! We ordered a side dish each as well and when the food came out, accompanied by some fresh baked bread, we struggled to get through it! But it was so delicious and a great birthday treat for Lindsay. We did manage to sneak in a dessert to share as well.

The next day we decided to get out and about a little more and went to visit the Tierra del Fuego National Park. We caught a bus that dropped us at one end of a nice coastal walk. The path was beautiful. It followed the water line with its really interesting rock formations and distant mountains of the other side of the water. On our right was a lovely green beech forest.

The trail took about 3 hours and popped us out near some other smaller trails that we continued to explore. They took us along more waterways, over squishy green peat hills, then through some drier forest to a beaver dam.

The beavers had been introduced to this area with the idea of breeding them for fur, but the winters in the southern parts aren't as harsh as the north and so the industry never really took off. Instead the animals have become pests, building dams causing valleys to flood and killing trees.

Despite their pest status they are still very much a tourist attraction. Though we weren't fortunate enough to spot any given they tend to sleep in the middle of the day, we could definitely see the destruction they had caused!

We still had time from there to walk to the most southern part of the park before the return bus would arrive. We arrived on a rocky beach, at which point a fence and sign warned us the land further south was protected. There was another beaver dam nearby surrounded by stumps where the beavers had removed the branches for their dam building. They are quite destructive for their size!

We had awoken the next morning to bucketing rain so we stayed in bed a little longer and decided not to do any more trekking. Soon after it ended up being a beautiful, still day, so we decided to explore more of town. We walked across a land bridge to a point opposite the town where we could look back on it. We could see the reflections of parts of the town on the water with a mountainous backdrop, beautiful.

After checking out an old war plane at the Aero Club we made our way back to town and came across a Memorial Park for the Islas Malvinas (Falklands) War and an outdoor photo exhibition from the war, though even in Spanish the captions gave little information.

From there we walked to a big shopping centre along the waterfront then returned to our cool little cabin, drank more vino and had a nice night in to prepare for our early morning departure to Puerto Natales.

LAPFWT