One Way United

Well, I am currently sitting in an internet cafe and I have only about 40 minutes to write about everything that has happened in the last week. It seems we have been in Ushuaia (or the surrounding area) forever now and we will finally be moving on tomorrow to Puerto Natales, Chile. None of the computers in this town seem to recognize cameras or ipods so unfortuantely pictures will have to wait…but trust me, the pictures are probably well worth the wait. Anyway, we stayed in a hostel for a couple days where we met a few people from the United States…including 2 people from UW! It was pretty crazy…we were there when the Seahawks were playing their NFC championship game and the plan was to go to a casino to watch it with these guys. However, even though the game was supposed to be on, we only got old tennis reruns…sad times…so we hung out with those seattle guys for a while at an Irish pub and then this thing called beer fest (yep…Adam and I are quite the partiers). Apparently right before we met them at the pub they were getting hit on by some gay guys on this cruise…listening to them tell the story was pretty funny. We also met this girl named Emily from New York who had been working on trail maintenance in Colorado for 6 months before coming to see Patagonia for a while. Then, we backpacked for three days in Tierra Del Fuego National Park. That was an adventure! The first day, we hiked straight from the hostel hoping to find our way into the park. That was a mistake as our map was really bad and we finally ran into this girl from Oregon who was renting a house on the hillside and told us that it was probably best to get a taxi…so she hailed a taxi for us and told the driver where we wanted to go. We always know that taxi was probably the way to go but it is always fun to be a little crazy sometimes. Anyway, this cab driver dropped us off at some random road and took off. So we started hiking down this road and into this beautiful valley. As we got near the border to the National Park we came across something we were not expecting to see…wild horses! It was the strangest thing…when we came across these horses I was looking around thinking somebody had to be around but there was nobody and the horses were not tied up at all…it was pretty cool. We hiked further down the trail, constantly trying to figure out where we were because our map was pretty bad and the trail was not so good either. We ran into another group of horses later down the trail. These horses had a cute colt with them. We were actually, with enough patience and slow movements, able to get close enough to touch these horses, but they were still really skiddish. After a while, we finally found a place to camp on a river by a marsh that opened up into a view of the surrounding mountains…it was pretty nice. The next day we day hiked the whole day. It was cold and rainy most of the day which meant that we had to keep moving or we start freezing. We hiked up to a pass. It was pretty cool because the whole way up it was pretty windy, rainy, and loud from the streams, and then we got up to the top and it was totally peaceful. It made me realize why in the bible there are many occurences of people going up to the top of a mountain to talk to God. After 10 minutes of quiet peacefulness we started to freeze again so we headed back down. We explored this trail to cool lake and then came back down to our campsite and then, the sun came out! After we had cooked dinner we had an encounter with this cool little fox. We were sitting stareing at it in awe of this creature, and then he took our baggy of food and started running off! I chased him until he dropped the food and a little bundle of noodles had fallen out. I took the baggy but the fox still really wanted the bundle of dried noodles. I did not want to pick it up because then I knew the fox would leave and this was the most excitement I had had all day. So as the fox got closer to the noodles, I would get closer to the noodles and the fox would back off and then I would back off. We danced around like this for a few minutes and then the fox ran to a log where my socks were drying and took one of my socks! I ran to my sock and he dropped my sock and ran back to the food. After realizing the clever game the fox was playing, I ran back to the food myself to keep the fox from getting it. The fox finally gave up. I was shocked by how smart that fox was to try to distract me by taking my sock. Our incident with the fox will be mentioned in a Florida Today column soon. I will give you the link when I find it. The next day, the day we hiked out, was really interesting! We hiked out going up the pass, which was a lot harder in full packs (go figure). As we went down from the pass the views were amazing! We were walking along this trail cut out of a very steep slope and to our right was this mountain that had 7 major waterfalls shooting down from it. Down in the valley we could see horses grazing and in the distance we could see the Magellan strait where we were trying to get too. The whole scene was breathtaking. As were walking along this trail we were wondering when we would ever go down and it turned out the trail decided to go straight down. We followed the trail and it became so overgrown that it became pretty much impossible to follow. We finally fought our way through shrubs to this river and looked for where the trail might be. After finding no satisfactory answer, we started hiking down the closest looking trail thing. As it turned out…this was actually a trail…but a very poor one. After a while we got to a point where we had decide if we wanted to hike up this huge mud pit where it looked like the trail went or hike down the river in our sandals. We chose the latter so we started hiking down this river. We were either walking through shrubs or ice cold water for an hour or so (have I mentioned yet that we were very low on food and we were getting very hungry?). After a while we finally hiked up and found the trail again and I started singing “hallelujah.” After that, it was just a long walk to town. The trail ended up at this barbed wire fence on this guys property and we were so tired that we did not want to make the effort to find a way around so we went underneath. The guy was cool about it though, it seemed like he was used to it. We started hiking down to town, hailed the first taxi we saw, and ate a large pizza each after we got cleaned up at our hostel. The next day was a rest day. We met two nice people named Mounya and Robert. Robert is a freelance journalist that writes columns for Florida Today and Mounya is from Lebanon and speaks 5 different languages fluently. We hiked with Mounya yesterday in the park. Despite it being very cold and rainy, it was still a pleasant walk. The scenery was of course beautiful. We ended up walking with two very friendly people from Buenos Aires for a while. The guy, Manuel, works as a physician in poor villages that can not afford medical care. He taught me a lot about the history, gave me travel tips and was very interested in American politics. He could not understand why we were still in Iraq even though the majority of Americans no longer agree with the war. I did not really have an answer for him. Mounya and Robert are both heading to Puerto Natales as well. Mounya is arriving during the day on Monday and Adam and I are arriving at night time. Robert will probably arrive there on tuesday. So it seems like we are temporarily traveling with people now, which is very nice! I taught Mounya the card game “Egyptian Rat Screw” and we have all had some fun playing that…although she is the biggest cheater ever! Anyways…hopefully when we get to Puerto Natales we will be able to post pictures and such. And just to clarify…if anybody wants to travel with us for any length of time, please email us! And “cajixayguy” I think it would be awesome if you and the kids traveled with us for a while…although maybe you should talk to your wife first ; ) Anyways, love you all and peace out!

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At the edge of the world, there is a place with beautiful mountain ranges that seem to last forever and picturesque valleys that have a seemingly endless supply of wildlife, lakes, and streams. There are areas in which mountains meet the water with such beauty, it leaves you in complete awe as you feel tears well up in your eyes. And when the sun sets in this place, it is like God Himself is singing the most beautiful song you have ever heard. A song of creation, a song of love. This is the place we find ourselves in…Tierra Del Fuego in the town of Ushuaia.

We arrived here very late. We arrived on the bus right as the sun was setting (10:30). I should have been a little stressed since we did not have a reservation anywhere to stay that night…but the ride into town was so peaceful that I didn’t care. We had no idea that this area would be so mountainous and so, well, stunningly pictureesque. We got a few good pictures of the ride in but it was hard to take pictures from a moving bus (especially since most of the views were on the other side of the bus). Once we got off the bus, we were on a hunt for a place to stay. We briefly said goodbye to people from Israel that we met that stayed at our hostel in Punta Arenas and took the same bus to Ushuaia, and the hunt was on. The second place we tried had room but was pretty expensive…so we kept looking. We went door to door to 8 places or so and every place was full. There were tourists walking around with full packs like us, looking for any place to stay. We found our way back to the expensive hostel ($30) and got one of the last rooms. Now we are looking for a place to stay for tonight that is not so expensive. Anyway…we have some exploring to do…as soon as we find a place to stay! Love ya’ll!

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So I have good news and bad news. The good news is that Jordan and I now have combined 234 mb worth of photos. The bad news is that due to a defective computer we can´t upload any so you can actually see them. Take heart and hopefully we will find a machine that´s more cooperative in the near future. On the bright side when we finally do get some pictures up I think you will really like them. Between the two of us we have 79 pictures of the Magellenes Penguins we went to see yesterday. That´s right: 79 pictures of nothing but penguins. And Jordan has also decided to take a picture of any unusual food he eats while down here. Due to the fact that pizza has been one of our meals just about every single day we´ve been here he only has two. One is of a giant sandwhich that has nothing but chicken and cheeze in it. The other is of some ¨chiken soup¨ which has soup water with a whole wing of chicken, bones and all, sitting in it. It was actually pretty good though.

In other news we will be moving on from Punta Arenas tomorrow bright and early. We´ll be heading back to Argentina and down to Ushuaia, hopefully to do a little backpacking in the Tierra del Fuego National Park. I can hardly wait to spend a little time outdoors. I can forsee myself getting real tired of eating in restaurants all the time. If I were to name the one thing I miss the most about the states aside from people it would probably be mom´s home cooking…that and being able to drink out of the faucet. Later all!

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