Day 39 - 13 Jan.2012 - Rio Grande

Today is our last day in Ushuaia. We remember the day we were approaching the city we had some mixed feelings about it. We thought it would probably be awfully touristic and in some sense getting on your nerves as many of the ‘must see places’ turn out to be. Thinking back we were more chaffed about the geographical location than seeing Ushuaia itself. But then it positively surprised us. And of course Ushuaia is a sort of ‘Mecca’ for all those people of different nationalities, ages, coming form literally all possible corners of the globe to do they ‘caminho’ but it also managed to keep its friendliness and hospitality which some of the very touristic places lost.
We have booked the room in the hostel in Rio Grande and as there are only 200km to there, we decided to have another day in Ushuaia and leave only in the evening. We spent a great deal of time writing cards and in general having a relaxed day. Our initial thoughts were to go on one of the boat trips into the Beagle Channel to see sea lions and penguins but firstly we have seen them already at the Peninsula Valdes and secondly was Ania with a bit of a cold and we decided to give it amiss for this time.
In the afternoon we had a walk through the town centre and were as well on a quest to buy a jerry can. You would have thought that in this part of the world people always like to have some spare petrol when driving and such thing as a jerry can should be easy to get here. As it turned out, it wasn’t a simple task though.
On our way down it was not so much of a problem with petrol stations but people told us that on the way up through Ruta 40 and the Chilean side the petrol stations are more rare and some do only sell 5 litres per car as they are chronically short of petrol. Mind that the people who told us needed petrol but we need diesel, which apparently is less of a problem. Most of the shops had only a 5 litre one but this would not get us very far. At the end we found one and paid quite a lot for this plastic 20L‘bidón’. Back at the campsite we donated our old thermo-flask in exchange for a Polish book, ‘Ostatnie Historie’ by Olga Tokarczuk, that Ania found the other day in the community room. All in all it was quite a nice coincidence to find one of your favourite writers at the end of the world, and of course it made the book even more special.
At half past 7 we set off into the evening sun to drive back to Rio Grande. The evening light is in fact really beautiful casting a magic yellow spell over the countryside. We arrived at the hostel at ten and after a small snack went straight to bed.