Greetings from Ushuaia... the most Southerly city in the world. You can sail from here and not reach another city until you get all the way back around here again! They call this place "El Fin del Mundo" or "The End of the World", which is a pretty acurate description! It has taken me six days to get here from Buenos Aires, and five of those have been spent driving pretty much continuously from sunrise until sunset. I think I have seen the inside of every service station on the main road down here, and believe me, that's not as many as it sounds - at times you wonder if the petrol will last you long enough... it's sometimes hours between seeing another car, let alone a building!

Driving through Patagonia has been really interesting... the scenery has been the same the whole time until we got to Tierra del Fuego, which is the large island that Ushuaia is on. It has been flat, barren and to be quite truthful, pretty dull! Although seeing the horizon start to curve while looking over land is quite unusual. That said, there have been some real highlights. For starters witnessing the corruption of the border officials has been most entertaining. So far, we have had to bribe one with cash, one with fillet steak, and one with half a dozen red peppers... guess that one wanted stir fry for lunch!

Another unexpected highlight has been our rough camping. We stayed one night in our tents on a deserted beach, with no one else around for miles. We toasted marshmallows on the camp fire and made up a rather potent homemade punch with whatever spirits we could find in the local market! To see so many stars in the sky has also been awesome... when you're in the cities you forget how many stars there are when you're away from all the bright lights.

Our non-driving day en route was spent in Puerto Madryn, which was just stunning. We drove out to the Valdez Peninsular, which is a nature reserve, and we actually got to see Orcas/Killer Whales prowling the beach for baby sealions. We also visited a penguin colony there, where the penguins were literally only a couple of metres away. We had a beautiful day there, and it made such a change from driving.

Last night the border crossing from Chile back into Argentina held us up and we didn't make it to our planned camp so we had to stop where we could. We came across a hostel in the middle of nowhere (literally). A few of us opted to "upgrade" - the plan was to camp outside the hostel, but at 10 pm in the freezing cold, pitching a tent was the last thing we wanted to do. In exchange for the princely sum of $15 we got a bed, central heating and a hot shower... a fair trade I think! It was a strange little place though... not unpleasant, but it looked like it had been decorated by an old lady at least thirty years ago, and all the electricity went off at 11 pm, when the generator was switched off!

Now that we're finally here, tomorrow my plan is to hike through some of the national park here to the Martial Glacier, which is meant to be really beautiful, and do some more trekking the day after. It really is such a gorgeous part of the world down here that it would be a shame to not get out there and enjoy it properly.

I hope everyone is well back home. I am obviously missing you all.

Take care, and speak soon.

Lots of love
Nikki xxxxx