CORMORANTS

cormorants on a rock in the Beagle Channel

USHUAIA: MONDAY, JULY 30
Last November I crossed the immensity of Patagonia pretty much on cruise control. I had travelled for six months. I was cold and permanently tired. Ushuaia was the end. I stored the bike and headed for the airport.
Now Ushuaia is the beginning and I have sufficient energy to do the tourist things. Today I buy a ticket for the afternoon cruise on the Beagle Channel. The wind is blowing midway to a gale. The cruise boat is a twin-decked sixty-foot catamaran. I sit in the lower observation saloon, drink coffee and watch the cormorants. These are of the rock variety. They have white throats and bellies and are smaller than those that fishermen use in the Far East. The sea inside the harbour is smooth as slate. Every few seconds the cormorants duck their heads in the sea. Is the weather too warm? Or are they looking for fish?
They dive for fifty seconds or more. Surfacing, they paddle themselves almost clear of the water, stretch their long necks and wriggle. The catch is a swelling that passes down the throat. Two unpleasant grey gulls buzz the cormorants a couple of times before landing beside them. Cormorants float low in the water. The gulls float very high and remind me of paper sailboats my brother and I used to fold out of single sheet of paper and race down the burn.

BUS TO PATAGONIA

FRIDAY, JULY 27
The bus departs Buenos Aires at 8.30 p.m. on Wednesday. I arrive here in Ushuaia on Friday, at 10.30 p.m. Travelling by bus is more reliable and considerably cheaper than Aerolineas Argentina. The distance is 3000 kilometres. A bed-seat for the two nights on the bus to Rio Gallegos costs US$100 including aeroplane type food. The AndesMar coach is a double-decker. The bed seats are on the lower deck and seats are sufficiently wide to enable a passenger to sleep on his side. Take books. The Atlantic littoral is endless miles of featureless dry scrub; a Texan would be at home.
We reach Rio Gallegos at 8 a.m. I catch an immediate connection to Ushuaia, £11. The road crosses a wild lumpity moorland studded with lakes. Sheep, wild geese and vacuna share immense paddocks. Raptors perch on fence posts, face to the wind. We pass through four sets of Customs and Immigration: out of Argentina, into Chile; out of Chile, into Argentina – time consuming. A small drive-on ferry carries us across the Straits of Magellan – definitely romantic. We stop briefly in Rio Grande, then climb through a strange land of shattered pine forest. Thousands of trees lie tumbled. Amongst the fallen stand jagged stumps and half trunks. So must have been the battlefields of World War One. Beavers imported from Canada did the damage – or disease – or climate change. All three explanations are on offer.We creep up through mountains that once isolated Ushuaia. The road is surfaced with packed snow and ice. A double-trailer truck sprawls crumpled in the ditch on the inside of a curve. The last descent and we see street lights curving round the bay on the Beagle channel. The Municipality promotes Ushuaia as being both the most southerly town and the end of the world – more façade. Puerto Williams in Chile is further south and globes don’t have ends. Not that I care. I like the place. It was my goal last year on the ride south from Mexico. Now it is my starting point on a new journey.