Justine’s Blog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Wow! I can see why so many people want to visit Ushuaia. It´s marketed as the “city at the end of the world” and its in an incredibly beautiful setting with snowy peaks rising up around it in all directions. Photos don´t do it justice (well, mine dont anyway!), the scale of the peaks is quite overwhelming and the contrasting flatness of the Beagle Channel somehow adds to the power of the place. We had a great weekend, being tourists, looking around the shops, eating out, driving around and walking up towards the glacier behind the city. We also met up with Carlos again and met some friends of his and Monica & Marcelo´s. We briefly called in at the 2 kayak clubs in Ushuaia and met a few of the local paddlers. Now we are back in Rio Grande. We have had 12 days off paddling and tomorrow Barry will try having a paddle here to see how his wrist feels.  

 The weather is unusually calm in Rio Grande at the moment, this is the 3rd day without much wind. Yesterday we took the opportunity to walk up to Cabo Domingo, the large cape 10 km north of Rio Grande. It a lovely spot and we could get a good view of the coast we will be paddling along. I think  it´s very similar along the whole of the east coast, long stretches of beach, intersperced with cliffs. There is always some surf, even after 2 good weather days, but it is sometimes small.

Today, we drive south to spend the weekend in Ushuaia…  billed as the city at the end of the world! We are looking forward to it!

Having lots of time off in Rio Grande is giving us a chance to get to know more about Argentinian culture. A couple of nights ago we were treated to an asado, a traditional way of cooking meat, a bit like a BBQ on a grand scale. The asado is a feature inside the house that takes up part of a room! It’s huge and the size of the meat that you cook is also massive! We did have a few sausages, but everything else that was cooked was a slab from a cow. It was cooked slowly over an hour and a half and it was delicious.

Yesterday we took a drive down the coast to the south of here to look at the coast we will be kayaking past later on. It is neap tides at the moment and the tide still goes out a very very long way!

On Friday we will drive down to Ushuaia with Monica & Marcelo and spend the weekend looking around. We hope to start kayaking early next week, depending on how Barry´s wrist feels. By then we will have had almost 2 weeks off kayaking. Its a long time but Barrys wrist needs time to repair fully. When we start kayaking again, it will be our last chance  to continue with the trip this year, and Barry is anxious not to do any lasting damage to his wrist.

I went for a short paddle at Rio Grande this morning with Marcelo & Carlos. The river ´Rio Grande´is the biggest river in Tierra del Fuego and it reaches the sea in the town of ¨Rio Grande¨, the second largest Argentinian town in TDF, after Ushuaia.  We paddled out into the open sea for a short distance before paddling up river a bit. It felt good to be back on the water for a short while, although a bit strange to not be with Barry continuing our trip. Carlos tried out Barry´s nordkapp and my spare Mitchell blades.