Heading south to the 'southern most city in the world', Ushuaia, we made a short pit stop in Puerto Madryn, on the east coast of Argentina. Having spent the past 3.5 months in the heat, we were totally under-prepared for wind, rain and the cold.

During whaling season, it's possible to see Southern Right Whales and Orcas off the Peninsula Valdes, just north of Puerto Madryn. Unfortunately our timing was out, but we managed to get up close and personal with sealions and penguins, which was pretty spectular and would have been even better had it not been for the gale force winds and smacking rain.

A few days later we headed on yet another night bus down to Ushuaia. Unfortunately we missed our connecting bus so had to have a stop over in Rio Gallegos, officially the worst town on the planet. Tumble weeds blowing in the streets, 1000's of mental stray dogs following you around the town with no human life to be seen, it was like a nuclear testing town, so we didn't hang around.

12 hours, 4 passport controls (into and out of Chile & Argentina) and 1 very rough ferry journey later we arrived in Ushuaia. It was freezing. With a serious wardrobe malfunction, we layered up in all our clobber and hit the mountains. Again, we were greeted with bad weather so this hindered our ability to go on boat trips through the Beagle Channel (route to Antarctica) and also the views of the landscape.

Ushuaia really didn't live up to our expectations and both of us were a little down, missing home and craving the sun and warmth. To lighten our spirits we spent a copious amount of time in cafes, eating steak, drinking wine and gorging on chocolate. Not wanting to endure the hellish journey back up north, we blew the budget and flew to El Calafate using the military airline, LADE, a great way to overcome a fear of flying!