A tale of two cities - Ushuaia

Fin del Mondo. The end of the world. You can go further south than this city, but you'd be in a boat or in Antarctica - which is only 1,000km away. Very cool, and my destination for now. I don't know why, but coming down here appealed more to me than rainforest or Machu Pichu.

Apart from the atmoshphere of Ushuaia, which is pretty special because of the large number of Antarctic explorers, travellers and adventure freaks, there is its location and surroundings that make it special. It sits sandwiched between the Beagle Channel (named after Darwin's boat don't you know) and the Andes and is quite simply beautiful.

For most of my first and second days here I didn't do anything much other than wonder around the city in awe of the place. The buildings are not the most attractive, but in this situation they are lifted far above their individual mundane looks.

Where Rio Gallegos was the ugliest city I've ever seen, I think this is possibly the most beautiful. Where places like Bath and Paris have beautiful buildings you never get a sense of their location in the world. But here you know exactly where you are and exactly where you sit in relation to the landscape.

I had only planned to stay here for a couple of days, but I've now been here for a week and am not due to leave until Wednesday next week.

When I'd finally got over the shock and awe of my arrival here I took in a few of the sites. The most notable in the city is the old prison. At the turn of the 20th century, the Argentinians picked here to build their Alcatraz. And if I thought Alcatraz was a bleak place, it has nothing on Ushuaia prison. It must have been absolutely dreadful here, particularly in the winter.

I didn't scratch those letters on the door by the way, they were already there. As fascinating as the museum was, I was glad to get out. Horrible place.

The Maritime Museum wasn't quite as interesting, but it did have the remains of a boat built in Cowes outside it. Which was weird.

And a chart plotting all the shipwrecks in this part of the world - there's almost not enough room on the map to fit all the red crosses on around Cape Horn.

I hooked up with an Aussie guy and a Dutch girl for dinner one evening and we went to Kaupe, Ushuaia's premier dining destination. It looks like an old corrugated iron shack, like most of the buildings here, from the outside but inside it was gorgeous. Cold Antarctic scallops, King crab bisque, Patagonian sea bass. Delicious and all served up with a view out over the channel. Must be up there with the best I've ever eaten.

I've also had a go at a 4x4 adventure up by the lakes.

They drove us down to one lake (which is 150km long) along a river which has been destroyed by beavers. Beavers were imported to Tierra del Fuego 100 years ago and the damage they do to riverbanks has to be seen to be believed. I was shocked.

As we were bouncing down the track the driver screeched to a halt and jumped out shouting "Condor". And sure enough circling above us was an Andean condor. It's a shame it was right overhead as there are no trees in the picture to give a sense of scale to how big it was, but its wing spand must have been close to 10 feet. It's claws hang down from underneath its body and looked more like a dog's front legs than a bird's feet.

Then seemingly for some more jollies the driver jumped out of the Land Rover as we were slowly climbing a hill...

...and ran round to the back to take a picture. All the time while we were still moving. Funny guy. I kill you last.

We parked up on the shores of the lake and the drivers built a wood fire and cooked a storm of an assado. They bought great hunks of beef, chorizo and red wine. There's something about cooking and eating your food outdoors, it just tastes better, particularly if that outdoors is a lakeside in Tierra del Fuego!

Yesterday I went with an Irish guy down to the local rugby club where one of the guys who works in the hostel plays. It wasn't a great game by any means, but we were chatting to the coach and he said that while the standard isn't great when they play, they play with everything they've got because often the bad weather and pitch means they can't play. It was great to get off the tourist trail and see some real Argentinian life.

And I can't think of many rugby pitches in the world which have a backdrop like URC though!