Punta Arenas was our one night in a hotel from pretty much Santiago to Buenos Aires and the luxury of sleeping in a bed nearly stopped me from sleeping altogether!! For dinner, decided to splash on some seafood as we were on the coast and eventually went for Conger Eel, which was actually much like a meaty fish like sea bass. The restaurant was called La Luna and it had a proper wine bookcase stretching up the wall and accessible by sliding ladder and some very fine artisanal beers. The following day we set off for Ushuaia by means of a ferry across the Magellan Straits and a border crossing into Argentina. It all gets a bit complicated politically and geographically down here, but needless to say, the only way to Ushuaia is through the Magellan Straits which is controlled by Chile. We arrived fairly late into the campsite, which was right by the River Pipo and thankfully mosquito-less and with plenty of tree cover. The campsite cooked us a parrilla (grill/bbq) that was in true Argentinian style not ready until about midnight, but included a delicious slab of steak. The followig day we went on a cruise along the Beagle Channel (named after the Beagle ship that was captained by Fitzroy and carried Darwin to the Galapagos) which was pretty damn cold, but we saw lots of cormorants and sealions and the beautiful snow topped mountains of Tierra del Fuego. In the afternoon, we visited the Ushuaia Prison and Maritime Museum and spent a couple of hours walking around the exhibits in the old prison museum. This included a wing of the museum that was preserved as it had been when it was a prison. There followed hot chocolate, a walk around the town and a late lunch of King Crab Ravioli with a pot of Earl Grey. There were lots of restaurants displaying the King Crabs in a tank (like lobsters) for the diners to chose from as it is a speciality of the area. I took the next day off to have a long desired lie-in in the shade of the trees and to enjoy the sunshine by the river before the epic 5 day journey up to Buenos Aires that we are currently undertaking. Day 1 was hard work up to Rio Gallegos up to the Argentina/Chile border, back across the ferry across the Magellan Straits and back across the border into Argentina- 4 more stamps in the passport!! We made it up to a campsite (instead of rough camping) with showers and wifi, but set off again early this morning at 6am for the next leg up to Comodoro Rivadivia. At least now we're in Argentina and heading north, both the roads and the weather are improving.
