Thought this was interesting (if a little depressing).
Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness in a quiet American suburb.
garfield minus garfield
Here’s one of my favourites:
Just a quick note to say we just arrived home from our 6 week tour of Patagonia.
We had a fantastic time - really enjoyed our trip and are glad we did it.
We would love to go back and explore some of the areas of Patagonia we didn’t get to spend more time in at some point in the future. If we make it to Antarctica one day - we may well find ourselves back in Ushuaia anyway - which is good, we really liked it there. Of course, we have the rest of South America to explore as well!
We’re thinking perhaps Peru and the Inca Trail / Machu Picchu, plus Ecuador and the Galapagos, plus possibly Bolivia for our next trip - not sure when though.
Up at a reasonable time this morning to finish our packing and discard the last of the gear we wouldn’t need for the return trip.
Decided to wear our Teva’s on the plane rather than our boots - also pulled out our Thermarest pillows to carry on, so there’s plenty of room to pack the boots in our bags.
Got our airport transfer at around 11:30am and headed to the international airport - flight was at 2:25pm.
We arrived in Santiago on schedule and made our way to one of the LAN club lounges. We had a 7 hour or so wait for our flight to Sydney - so I spent the time catching up on blogging and uploading photos (very fast link here with free WiFi!).
Our flight leaves at around 11:05pm tonight (just over an hour from now) - and stops in Auckland before continuing to Sydney - scheduled to arrive at just after 7am Sunday morning (we skip Saturday when we cross the date line).
 Buenos Aires to Sydney - trip overviewWe plan on catching the train home and walking with our packs - depends on how we feel when we arrive!
This will be the last blog entry from the trip itself … although over the next few weeks I’ll do some reviews of the places we’ve visited, the activities and tours we’ve done and the gear we took.
 Leanne with her pack - Sydney Central Station
|  Simon with his pack - Sydney Central Station
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Up reasonably early this morning to finish our packing and check out of the hostel and book a taxi to the airport.
 Ushuaia, ArgentinaOur flight to Buenos Aires left a bit later than the 12:05pm scheduled time. At least it was a direct flight - about 3.5 hours.
 Ushuaia, ArgentinaOur transfer driver was waiting for us when we arrived and we got to the hostel with no problems - it was really hot and humid though … we’re missing the cool weather already!
We put on our Teva’s (nice to be out of the boots) and headed out for a walk - walked the length of the pedestrian mall “Florida” and back, stopped for some dinner and then eventually wound our way back to the hostel.
Had an early night - the humidity not too comfortable - has been raining a lot here too … lots of water lying around.
 Ushuaia to Buenos Aires - trip overview
Slept in today - decided to have a slow day and just do some stuff around town.
Headed out late morning and visited Museo Fin del Mundo (End of the World Museum) about the history of the area and the town of Ushuaia.
One interesting part of the museum was a collection of stuffed birds (and a couple of animals) found in the region. Despite it being a little creepy, I took lots of photos to help me with identification of some of the birds we have seen. I’m disappointed we didn’t see any woodpeckers!
 Magellanic Woodpecker (stuffed) - Museo Fin del MundoAfter lunch we decided to visit the local aquarium, which was a 45 min walk from downtown. It turned out to be not a lot more than an old building with a few fish tanks in it - but they were large tanks and they had some marine creatures we hadn’t seen before (although it was poorly labelled, so we didn’t really know what they were). Certainly not worth the 25 peso entrance fee (around AU$9).
After walking back and stopping for afternoon tea, we headed back to the hostel to have a rest and get some washing done.
Dinner was the rest of the leftover bolognaise from the other night - three meals out of one dish saves a lot of money!
Had an early night after doing a bit of packing ready to leave in the morning.
Got up a bit later than we had planned this morning - but managed to catch a 10:30am bus out to the Tierra del Fuego National Park - only 20km from town. We weren’t sure what the weather would be like - the forecast was for 14 degrees
We started off walking around Lago Roco until we reached the Chile - Argentina border (the trail stopped here). We then walked back and all the way around to Lapataia Bay (about 7 hours all up) where we caught a bus back to town.
 Tierra del Fuego National Park - Ushuaia, Argentina
|  Tierra del Fuego National Park - Ushuaia, Argentina
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 Argentina - Chile Border, Tierra del Fuego National Park - Ushuaia, Argenti
|  Argentina - Chile Border, Tierra del Fuego National Park - Ushuaia, Argenti
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 Lago Roco, Tierra del Fuego National Park - Ushuaia, Argentina
|  Lago Roco, Tierra del Fuego National Park - Ushuaia, Argentina
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 Peat Bog - Lago Negra, Tierra del Fuego National Park - Ushuaia, Argentina
|  Geese, Tierra del Fuego National Park - Ushuaia, Argentina
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 Lapataia Bay, Tierra del Fuego National Park - Ushuaia, Argentina
|  Lapataia Bay, Tierra del Fuego National Park - Ushuaia, Argentina
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It was a nice day for walking - cool but not cold. It did rain a bit in the afternoon, but not too much. It was really nice to be able to walk through the forest areas with nobody else around. Quite a lot of birds around the bay area and many Chimango Caracara around the campsite. These look like a small bird of prey, but are more like crows in their behaviour - scavengers and noisemakers.
 Chimango Caracara, Tierra del Fuego National Park - Ushuaia, ArgentinaInterestingly there were hundreds of rabbits around - we weren’t sure if they were native or not (someone told us later they are introduced). Didn’t seem to be that much damage from rabbits like we typically see in Australia - but then, there was plenty of lush green grass for them to nibble on - even in the middle of Summer.
 Rabbits, Tierra del Fuego National Park - Ushuaia, ArgentinaI reheated the leftover bolognaise from last night for dinner and spent the evening posting blog entries from the past week.
 Tierra del Fuego National Park - satellite view
We slept in a bit this morning - breakfast was served until 10:30am, so there was no reason to rush! I was still feeling really tired and didn’t feel like rushing out - so we lazed around the room and Leanne headed out to buy some postcards and look in some shops while I had a bit of a nap. I met her just before lunch and we walked down to the waterfront to take some photos and enjoy the stunning scenery - this is a beautiful town with snow-capped mountains on three sides and a body of water out the front.
 View from FreeStyle Hostel - Ushuaia, Argentina
|  View from FreeStyle Hostel - Ushuaia, Argentina
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 Ushuaia, Argentina
|  Dolphin Gull - Ushuaia, Argentina
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 Kelp Goose - Ushuaia, Argentina
|  Oystercatcher - Ushuaia, Argentina
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We stopped for some lunch and then headed back to the hostel so Leanne could have a snooze and I got some more blogging done.
 Flying (?) Steamer Ducks - Ushuaia, Argentina
|  Ushuaia, Argentina
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We went out after about 6pm and walked down to the supermarket to buy makings for dinner - another Penne Bolognaise (it’s been a couple of weeks since my last one!), which we cooked in the well appointed hostel kitchen.
 Ushuaia, ArgentinaHad an early night after watching a bit of TV and doing some more blogging.
Breakfast was early - 7am this morning, but we had to have our bags packed and sitting outside our rooms before we went so that the crew could take them out to the dock for us. We finished our packing and then headed down to breakfast. It was a bit quiet - many people had already left to meet their transfers for the next part of their journey. I was surprised at how many people were not staying in Ushuaia at all.
 Our cabin - Cruceros Australis
|  Our cabin - Cruceros Australis
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We checked out just after 8am, collected our bags from the dock and headed into town. Fortunately the crew had already processed our immigration into Argentina, so we were able to leave without any lengthy processing - we just had to remember to set our watches forward an hour.
 Leaving Cruceros Australis at Ushuaia
|  Leanne with her pack - Ushuaia
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 Cruceros Australis - satellite view Cruceros Australis - map viewWe walked up to our hostel “FreeStyle” - found it easily after a rather steep climb up the hill, made the hills in Bariloche and El Calafate seems quite insignificant. Of course, it was too early to check in, so we sat in their dining room and I use the WiFi link to download the 350 or so emails waiting for me after being offline for 5 days. Leanne wandered in to town for a bit to find some tourist information and came back in time for us to move into our room. While Leanne was out, I got talking to a British girl who was explaining to a German girl about the various towns and what she could do at each place. I was able to add some useful suggestions too - about the only good thing about being at the tail end of our trip is that we are now useful to people who are just starting - and we regularly get grilled for information on where to go, how to get there, what to do, and most importantly - how much it all costs!
After settling in to our room, we headed out to find some lunch. We were just about to leave the cafe - Leanne went to the bathroom and recognised one of the girls coming out - it was Meredith from our Spanish class back in Sydney who had arrived the night before! We knew she was coming to South America, but to arrive at the end of the earth at the same time, and then go to the same cafe at the same time was a bit freaky. We talked for a bit and then agreed to meet for dinner.
Leanne and I headed down to find a minibus that would take us to the chairlift up to Martial Glacier. We were advised by a local that due to the nice weather, all the minibuses were usually full, so it would probably be better to catch a taxi. It was only 7km away and I’d heard that catching a taxi was a common thing to do, so we found a taxi rank and were driven up a very windy road to the chairlift. We caught the chairlift to the top and then walked a couple of kilometres up the valley towards the glacier. At this point, the trail headed up to a lookout at the base of the glacier which apparently had great views - but we didn’t really feel like more climbing, and we hadn’t worn our trekking clothes - so we turned around and headed back. It was a nice outing anyway, and we enjoyed the countryside. We caught the chairlift back down and then waited for a taxi, which eventually dropped us back at our hostel.
 Leanne - Martial Glacier - Ushuaia, Argentina
|  Leanne - Martial Glacier - Ushuaia, Argentina
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 Martial Glacier - Ushuaia, Argentina
|  Martial Glacier - Ushuaia, Argentina
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 Martial Glacier - Ushuaia, Argentina Glacier Martial, Ushuaia - satellite viewWe had a bit of a snooze and then went to arrange some washing. It turns out that the hostel have their own laundry facilities, and for only 10 pesos, we could do a full load (we ended up using both washing machines at once!), and dried them in the drier - it was done quite quickly and we were able to wash almost everything which was great.
We finished just in time to meet Meredith for dinner and headed out to find a restaurant. Dinner was nice - I tried some Calafate icecream for dessert (ideally I should have done this in El Calafate !!), which was very nice - it has a subtle berry flavour - not unlike boysenberry I thought.
After dinner we headed back to the hostel, Leanne headed to bed while I started to get caught up with the blogging - getting a bit behind now - we were a lot busier on the boat cruise than I had expected!
 Ushuaia - trip overview satellite image
Just a quick note to let you know we arrived in Ushuaia, Argentina after our 4 night cruise - it was fantastic. We managed to land on Cape Horn (something they only get to do around 60% of the time due to bad weather). We were very lucky - as the last Zodiacs were returning, the wind picked up and hit 70 knots (around 130kph)
We took over 1300 photos, of which we kept just over 600 (I spent a lot of time deleting photos - mostly duplicates). We saw a lot of birds - most of them the ubiquitous Kelp Gull, although we had nearly constant companionship from the Black-browed Albatross and Imperial Cormorant, with the occasional Kelp Goose sighting. Saw a few Dolphins, and a couple of Elephant Seals - which was quite special.
 Simon and Leanne at Cape Horn Simon and Leanne at Cape Horn
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