Ushuaia: the city at the end of the world

Ushuaia: the city at the end of the world.

After our extended bus journey from Rio Gallegos, we arrived in Ushuaia, la ciudad del fin del mundo, at the very bottom of Argentina, in the early afternoon. As the bus pulled into the town, the white world gave way to a shoreline flanked by mountains. This is the Beagle Channel, named after the British ship that passed through here on a surveying mission in 1828. In 1832, Charles Darwin sailed arrived in the same ship on his famous five-year round-the-world voyage. For me, however, this is as far south in the world as I will get – on this trip at least.

The Argentine Atlantic coast (and a bit of Uruguay)

A tail of a Southern Right Whale in Puerto Madryn, Argentina.

South America. A new continent. I’ve dreamt of coming here since forever, and now I’m here. It feels as like I’m starting travelling all over again, as if the last seven months through Asia and Australasia were another adventure entirely. Here is a whole new world waiting to be discovered.

New Zealand

View over Lake Wanaka from Treble Cone.

I looked down from the plane across the magnificent Southern Alps cutting a rift along the length of New Zealand’s South Island and thought, I’m going to enjoy this country.

Hitching the Australian outback

Driving through the middle of nowhere.

I could still feel the humidity in the air when I arrived at 4am in Darwin, Australia, reminding me that Asia had only been a short flight away. I knew I had to escape further to the south. In Bishkek I had met a travel writer, Jamie Maslin, who was hitching his way from Tasmania to England and his tales inspired me to attempt at least part of his journey in reverse. And so it was I went straight out on to the Stuart Highway, the only road heading south through the centre of this huge, empty country.

A little bit of Indonesia

The ash cloud from Krakatoa.

I knew that Indonesia is big and has a lot of islands, but I hadn’t realised quite how long it would take me to traverse just a few of those islands, and how long I would be sitting on hot buses chugging their way through mounds of volcanic ash.