Ushuaia and Puerto Williams: the end of the world and the real end of the world

We were finally done watching penguins and elephant seals in Puerto Madryn, and ready for another long bus trip.

Try “long” as in “30 hours”. First, we pulled another all-nighter to Rio Gallegos, famously known for – well, pretty much nothing. But at least we could get off the bus, walk around a little bit, and spend the following night in a real bed. The next morning, we then headed to our actual destination:

Ushuaia! The southernmost town on earth, and the end of the world.

Although only another 350 km, this final leg of the trip required crossing the Argentina/Chile border twice, with long waits each time. Of course they have to be very thorough in stamping all those papers and going through each passenger’s luggage, cause hey, it’s not that the bus just transits through no man’s land with no intermediate stops. Hope by the way you enjoyed those bananas from our travel bag, Chilean customs officers! Next time we’ll make sure to bring you some strawberries, too.

But anyways – once we arrived, we quickly realized it was absolutely worth the effort of getting there. Except for the ugly casino building they burped right into downtown Ushuaia, the Tierra del Fuego (Land of Fire / Feuerland) region is beautiful, with lots of mountains and water and a change of weather every 2 hours or so.










We spend a couple of days there with walking around and staring at the breathtaking scenery.

We also did some horseback riding through the hills and along the beach.  Beautiful, but after the four-hour ride, we felt every muscle and other unspeakable body parts for the following three days.

After four days, we were ready to move on, and our plan was to cross the Beagle channel to Chile. Now, as we learned, Argentina and Chile haven’t actually been best friends over the last couple of decades for various reasons.

One of the consequences is that there are no ferries crossing the Beagle channel on a regular schedule. So the only option is to charter a boat with one of the local boating companies, which is what we did.







It wasn’t as expensive as we thought: we had budgeted for two arms and all four of our legs, but they actually charged us a little less than that after we chipped in our souls and promised our first-born as well.

So, these two trustworthy-looking fellas took us and one other passenger safely to the other side (and yes, they checked for bananas again there). About an hour and another bus ride later, we arrived at …

Puerto Williams - the southernmost town on earth and the end of the world!

Heard that before? Yeah, it’s undeniable that they’re on the Southern side of the channel and therefore, unlike Ushuaia, can rightfully claim this title. But nobody seems to hear the voice of their 2,262 inhabitants when they complain about it.

There wasn’t too much to do in Puerto Williams, but the landscape here was just as beautiful. We enjoyed our two nights at the cozy Bella VistaHostal, with breakfast actually served in the host family’s living room with a view over the water.



The locals were very friendly and talkative, you can easily spend hours talking to them on the street or in the restaurant (yes, there’s only one) about topics such as “aah Alemania! Beckenbauer! Sepp Maier!”

So, that’s it from the southern end of the planet – more about our 28 hour trip out of Puerto Williams on a ferry / “cruise ship” in our next blog post. J