9 March 2008
For Sunday, our hostel booked us a seal tour and a hike through the tiny portion of the Tierra del Fuego National Park in Ushuaia that is open to tourists. I felt rather conspicuously young and American on the Isabella tour boat filled with Japanese and Argentine retirees. We cruised through the chilly gray water of the Beagle Canal past a picturesque red and white lighthouse to an island covered with inelegant, barking seals and sea lions.
Later, our hike consisted of a pleasant 3½ hour trek through the forest along the coastline. We saw thousands of mussels clinging to the rocks of watery inlets and several brown and black rabbits grazing in grassy clearings. Strangely, the last half an hour was a pseudo hike through a 20 foot span of pseudo forest between a barbed wire fence and a road.
We dined our last dinner at one of the many delightful tenedor libre (all-you-can-eat buffet) and parrilla (grill) restaurants along the main street. Despite the large fly that I discovered in our bread dipping sauce, the food and service were excellent. The meat is cut at your request by the parrillero (grill master) from various animal parts impaled on skewers over a roaring fire. I also decided that Ushuaia´s Beagle beer is definitely worth searching for back in the US.
