USHUAIA: A DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE INTIMATE AND THE INFINITE

Why should a true traveler visit Ushuaia at least once in a lifetime? Following a recent invitation to a Blogtrip by the Argentinean Ministry of Tourism the present article focuses on this question.

How can some cities catch a spell on us when we spot their name on a map?   It may not be very poetic to test the strength of magic but on return to Ushuaia I decided to rush into such labyrinths of travelñ psychology. Why do travelers visit Ushuaia once and again through their lives? Laura and I  had first visited the city in November 2010 with a range of fuzzy dreams. We were grateful to the city, we had arrived with no expectations and, instead, we had ended up embarking to Antarctica.

What makes it worth traveling 3,040 miles to Ushuaia? Does a cold geographical record alone justify such a long trip? I should be sincere. Arriving on this this shy city on the Beagle Channel redefined my emotional cartography. I will  try to elucidate the essence of the magic of the world's southernmost city,  Argentina's other population on the other side of the Andes ...

Again, I walked  along the waterfront, as I remembered what it was like to be on the edge of the world itself. The snow always drifts Martial Glacier, jagged peaks and granite cathedrals and snow, winter always spectrum Ushuaia enveloping you placed a crown ether. The fascination that one sees on the faces of tourists and international travelers who come to quench their thirst for glory to sign proclaims the end of the world is boundless and contagious. They say that a girl recently arrived in unicycle riding from Canada. Therefore, to say that there are travelers Ushuaia is an understatement: the city itself seems to be traveling, dammed in the eyes of the adventurers. Does magic that lies in knowing you are thousands of miles away from home and close to nothing?

It suffices to look south from Ushuaia, to suspect that there is something more. Crouched beside a passage connecting the two great oceans of the world and port that opens the game to explore the southern seas, the city is like a huge albatross fly without notice to land on another rock. Ushuaia is a madman on the loose, a kite that escapes us at any time. And travelers who walk through its boulevards we become acrobats in excess of the landscape. While I seemed to be at the pit of the matter, I had to admit that an extreme landscape, proud and pure at the same time, channels, mountains and uninhabited islands, was at the height of "World's End" and was undoubtedly one of the ingredients of the magnetism of Ushuaia.

And resolved to spy detectives decided to embark closer landscape that was hinted as the aroma of coffee or snuff. As a traveler I know that often the charm of landscapes fade to want to touch: they had to try the Beagle Channel. To do this, we got on one of the many catamarans that offer navigation channel. I like to walk around the deck braving the cold of Antarctic latitudes. Ushuaia is democratic, as it allows everyone to feel a browser.

The first stop is the Bird Island, where we observe a colony of cormorants. I get along with cormorants: a day in the Norwegian Arctic few ornithologists concluded that if coming from the South of the world, I was like a migratory bird and I put a ring numbered for cormorants. Now was in front, pulling in calvados and diving up to 45 meters in search of food. In China I heard that the fishermen tied a rope and used for fishing. When poor cormorant had swallowed a fish the Chinese pull the lanyard and take out the dam of the peak. But nobody bothers Ushuaia cormorants, much less the occasional sea lions bask in static majesty beside her.

Leaving Ushuaia Bay and sailing sea eastward almost immediately bristled. We had lost sight of the city and the sea feeling we had all four travelers (Lazzarino Laura, Laura Schneider, Guillermo Paez and me) smiling and bewildered. At that time is when I Ecleuriers appears Faro (1920). Its red and white stripes indicate the port avid ships approaching navigable waters, and travelers like us who are falling from the map ... Is this the famous Lighthouse at the End of the World, immortalized in the eponymous novel by Jules Verne ? Almost: the aforementioned by the French is actually in Staten Island. But the nickname not feel anything wrong, and I'm willing to throw away who I remember the difference.

It had been two hours since we left Ushuaia. We were away. On the south coast of the Beagle Channel, the Chilean side, we passed Puerto Williams, a town of 2,000 inhabitants too small to snatch his record Austral Ushuaia. The Canal marks the boundary is not always clear between the two countries, which in 1978 were on the verge of war because of the Picton, Lennox and Nueva. Then another village, this time the Argentine side: it's Puerto Almanza, a village dedicated to fishing for crab, and so arrived at the Estancia Harberton.

Harberton was founded in 1886 by Lucas Bridges, having renounced the established Anglican Mission in Ushuaia in 1869, in order to evangelize the Yamana. The yámanas some once dominated these bays and channels from their canoes, in which even lit bonfires to keep warm. They lived by hunting sea lions, whose fat is rubbed to insulate from extreme cold. For the poor things were exterminated-little unexpected-in processing evangelize. While no trace of the Yamana, you may have reincarnated thousands of penguins flapping in neighboring Hammer Island penguin colony. These, by far, are showing more skill in the Yamana and-definitely going naked. stay away from the bibles.

We wrapped again Ushuaia harbor with its sailboats and cruise ships, many of them ready to sail. I think then finished Ushuaia understand the formula. The magic that prints on the sensitivity of travelers, not from the city itself, but precisely what is not there, of that neighborhood with the intangible, intuited the presence of Antarctica, the Falklands and Cape Horn. A small ramp port as amazing worlds, whether on the map that we utopias. A dialogue between the intimate and the infinite, with necessary scale in the human heart. So Ushuaia conquer: is a matrix of all dreams.