Tierra del Fuego National Park

April 17, 2024April 24, 2024 / Maria / 1 Comment

On our second day in Ushuaia, we were determined to visit Tierra del Fuego National Park. I was really tempted to check out some of the hiking trails in the area, but I felt that visiting the park was a unique experience that I didn’t want to miss, so we opted to do the much more touristy activity. We signed up for a tour and got picked up at our hostel in the morning to drive towards the park. The bus dropped us off at the train station and we had the opportunity to travel into the park by train instead.

Tierra del Fuego is already an interesting geographic region at the end of the world, but it has an interesting history as well. We didn’t have the opportunity to learn very much about its indigenous history, except that there were a number of indigenous Fuegian groups living all over the coastal south region and the interior of the island. They had a very unique culture and were never colonized by the Incans (like many other parts of Argentina and Chile), but like many indigenous groups, they were devastated by the arrival of the Europeans and diseases like measles and smallpox.

Unfortunately, the park doesn’t really focus on this history. It’s a common theme we noticed in both Argentina and Chile, with the bypassing of indigenous history, save for our guide in Santiago, who shared more indigenous history with us on his 3 hour tour, than we learned on the rest of the entire trip. The National Park is heavily marketed to tourists, but they’ve decided to focus on the colonial history of Ushuaia and the surrounding area.

Ushuaia was initially founded as a penal colony in the early 1900’s and as it expanded, a railway was constructed to transport the prisoners into the forest to harvest timber to support the town’s growing needs. The train has been refurbished and is now known as “el tren del fin del mundo”. Today, it transports hundreds of tourists 7km into the park, showcasing gorgeous landscapes and educating visitors on the history of the railroad. It was a cool experience – it’s very picturesque and I enjoyed the opportunity to learn about the history – but I have to say, the entire experience is a bit tasteless.

The train has a very dark history, as many of the prisoners were severely mistreated during this time period. I felt that the tour didn’t understand its intention, in that it didn’t think critically about the experiences of the prisoners or respect them. The audio tour starts off by talking about how progressive it was to offer the prisoners work, and that many of them loved the opportunity to get outside and enjoy nature. But then later in the tour it expands on how the prisoners were starved, beaten, and mistreated while working in what was essentially a labour camp. It’s not like they were given the choice to participate in labour, so it didn’t seem very progressive to me and felt rather tone-deaf.

This is exacerbated by the fact that the Park also has paid actors running around everywhere dressed as goofy prisoners. They make you take a photo with them before boarding the train where they encourage you to pretend that you caught these naughty prisoners trying to escape (and then later try and sell you the photo of course). I found the entire production to be disrespectful and insulting to the people that suffered in this prison at the start of the century. It’s a good learning opportunity, but it was too commercialized and executed poorly.

It’s a one-way train journey, so our tour bus picked us up at the end of the line and we spent the next several hours exploring around the park. This part of the tour, I really enjoyed. First we visited the post office. It’s not the most southerly post office in the world (that honour is reserved for the one in Antarctica), but it is known as the “end of the road”. The road in question is the Pan-American highway, which stretches 30,000km from Alaska to Ushuaia. The post office is located on a beautiful beach, so we sent ourselves a postcard (stamped with a penguin) and then enjoyed the views.

Our next stop was Lapataia, which is the real end of the road and has a beautiful mirador of the Beagle Channel. Our bus dropped us off 1km away from the parking lot and we did a short walk through the forest to Lapataia and then explored the viewpoints. It was a nice day – not super warm, but a mix of sun and clouds. I really liked the forest walk, which smelled amazing after rain from the previous night. Our last stop was to Lago Roca, which is a huge lake located on the border between Argentina and Chile. Our tour guides shared some local spirits with us at the end of the tour (which was actually delicious, a very caramelly whisky), before returning to Ushuaia.

We spent the rest of the afternoon shopping around the downtown area. Seth was determined to find a bird guide and we visited some of the outdoor stores, of which there is actually a large number due to the many expeditions leaving from Ushuaia. But our main goal for the rest of the day was to sample the king crab that Ushuaia is known for. Our tour guides all recommended the same restaurant, a small place called El Viejo Marino, but given how small it was and how often it’s recommended, we could not get a table. Seth did a bit of research and found a place called La Casa de Los Mariscos, which I would highly recommend!

We got to the restaurant 15 minutes before it opened and were the first in line for the night, but a long line quickly developed behind us and by the time the doors opened, the entire restaurant was immediately filled. It was a great choice and one of the best meals I had on the entire trip! The popular dish is the parmesan king crab, which is basically a full crab baked with parmesan cheese. It was delicious and we ordered one to share with a seafood paella that came with squid, scallops, shrimp, clam, mussels, and white fish! We topped it off with a full bottle of wine for the low low price of $9. There was a guy performing life music throughout the night as well and the whole restaurant had a great vibe!

It was a wonderful way to end our time in Ushuaia. It was a very quick trip to the end of the world, we only really had two days there as we flew out to El Calafate early the next morning. I found our trip to be a bit airplane heavy on the front end with the excursion down to Ushuaia, but once we landed in El Calafate, we wouldn’t be flying anymore until the end of the trip,

El Calafate is further north than Ushuaia (everything is), but is located squarely in the center of the Argentine Patagonia. It’s the jumping off place for anyone looking to explore Los Glaciares National Park. Like Ushuaia, it was not at all what I expected. I thought El Calafate would be smack dab in the middle of the mountains, but Patagonia is quite different from the other mountainous regions I’ve visited. Mostly in that it’s still true wilderness. There are not very many towns actually located in the mountains. The mountains are crowded around the Argentina-Chile border, but east of the border mountains, Argentina is pretty much all flatland desert. It’s very dry and barren.

El Calafate is located right on the enormous Lago Argentino. It has a nice view of the mountains across the lake, but the town is characterized more by the desert than the mountains. We stayed in a nice little guesthouse, arriving around noon. We were starting our first trek the following day, so we spent the afternoon picking up some groceries for the trip and sourcing other things we couldn’t bring with us, like fuel for our stove. We enjoyed some beers at Patagonia Brewing and then spent the rest of the day birdwatching at Laguna Nimez, a reserve next to the lake. We saw lots of birds, but the most interesting was probably the Chilean Flamingo! There were dozens of them hanging out in the lagoon and they’re pretty goofy to watch.

In the evening, we re-packed our bags, leaving a suitcase at the guesthouse and getting our backpacks ready for our first trek: 3 days on the Sendero Fitz Roy!

Skiing in Levi

May 10, 2023April 14, 2023 / Maria / Leave a comment

The last segment of our trip was to another small town in Lapland called Levi. It’s only about an hour from Yllas, so we drove there after our visit to the snow hotel. While I didn’t care to sleep in a snow hotel, I was keen to try out one of the glass huts. There are several different glass huts around the region and as the name suggests, they are basically glass roofed hotel rooms. Unsurprisingly, they are not cheap, so I shopped around a bit before deciding on the Northern Lights Huts in Levi, which are pretty new and the cheapest I could find in the region.

It was a great choice! It’s located on a reindeer farm about 20 minutes away from Levi town. There’s 10 glass huts on the property and we had one booked for 2 nights. The huts are very new and really nice on the inside, so it was nice to relax for a little bit after a busy day of dogsledding. We returned to town for supper, but otherwise had a chill evening.

My primary motivation in booking the hut was as a last ditch attempt to make it easy to see the northern lights. Fortunately, we’d already seen them 4 nights in a row by then, so it removed a lot of the pressure. The geomagnetic storm was winding down and the KP was back around 2-3 for our last two nights, so I wasn’t sure if we would see them. On the first night it was pretty cloudy and we didn’t see anything before bed. The app said the clouds would clear around midnight, so I set an alarm and we woke up at midnight and could see them from our bed! So it ended up working out nicely because I definitely would not have trudged down to the lake in Akaslompolo at midnight, but it was nice to wake up and watch them inside for a bit and then go back to sleep.

On our last full day in Lapland we had planned a second skiing day. Levi resort is bigger than Yllas and fortunately the wind storm had moved on and the entire resort was open! While Yllas only had two faces to access the mountain, Levi had at least 4. There are two main lifts, one from Levi town and one from the south face, which is where we opted to start. Levi was busier than Yllas, so it took a while to get our rentals, but after that there was a lot of terrain to choose from.

I recall there being at least 3 chair lifts and 1 gondola, but pretty much all the other lifts were T-bars and there must have been at least a dozen of them! The mountain is completely bare on top, so you can pretty much ski down it in any direction. Each T-bar only services about 2-3 runs, so we slowly made our way around the mountain. The terrain was simple enough that we could ski any run on the mountain, so we just explored as much as we could. It’s a very different experience than skiing in Canada, but I enjoyed it more than Yllas.

We had lunch at a small restaurant on the east side of the mountain, but my favourite skiing terrain was on the west side. While the temperatures had been between -10 to -20 degrees celsius when we arrived in Rovaniemi, it had warmed up a lot over the week and it was around 0 degrees when we skied Levi. It felt much warmer and it even starting to feel a bit like Spring. There was no fresh powder on either mountain that we skied, but because it’s generally cold and dry in Lapland, neither mountain was icy.

We discovered a pancake restaurant in Levi that I was excited to try for dinner on our last night. So we enjoyed some giant savoury pancakes before retiring to our hut for the evening. The KP was only 2 on the last night, so I wasn’t expecting much even though it was clear, but the aurora treated us a real show! I guess because we’re so far north, you can still get a very active sky, even with a low KP.

At first the lights seemed pretty normal and similar to other nights, but around 9 or 10pm they got incredibly active and despite having the glass roof, I couldn’t resist going outside to photograph them. The lights were pulsing from horizon to horizon and we couldn’t catch the full scope of them from inside. It was probably the second best night we’d seen them and it was a real treat to witness them swirling across the sky one last time. Seth had kind of gotten over the allure by that point, but the northern lights captivated me every single night I saw them. I admit I got a little obsessed and since I returned home, I’ve been plotting when I can see them again.

The aurora goes through cycles throughout the night, but they also go through larger cycles throughout time. We’re currently heading into a period of increased geomagnetic activity for the next few years, so it should be easier to see them over the next 5 years, so if there’s ever been a time to plan an aurora trip, this is it!

Our last day in Finland was pretty boring. We enjoyed our buffet breakfast at the hotel and then drove two hours back to Rovaniemi to catch our flight. One thing we learned is that the Finns all have a secret sweet tooth and eat a lot of candy and chocolate. Finnish chocolate is really creamy and delicious, so we stopped by the grocery store on the way back to stock up. We had an uneventful flight back to Helsinki and returned to Katie’s apartment for our last night.

Katie took us to a ramen restaurant for our last meal and we spent an hour walking around the city before returning to her place for one last sauna session. She’s scheduled to finish her degree before the end of the year, but she’s also planning to stay in Helsinki and look for work, so who knows, we might be back again in the future.

Finland is probably not the first place that comes to mind when you’re planning a holiday, much less a winter holiday, but I really loved it. The aurora certainly made it memorable, but even without the aurora, it’s a cool place and I liked a lot of their progressive policies. I would definitely come back in the winter to chase the aurora again – I’m not sure I’d visit Lapland in the summer, but I’d consider returning to Helsinki in the summer and maybe tack on a visit to Norway or Sweden to do some hiking. Overall we had a great trip and would definitely recommend!

Dog Sledding and Other Adventures

May 3, 2023April 13, 2023 / Maria / Leave a comment

On our second day in Yllas we made another attempt at the ski hill. This time we drove around to the Yllas side since there are more chair lifts. It was still windy, so we were disappointed that the top half of the mountain remained closed, but we decided to go skiing anyways. It was mid-week, so fortunately it wasn’t too busy – we had to wait in line at most lifts, but given that half the mountain was closed, it could have been a lot worse.

Skiing in Finland is a very different experience from skiing in Canada. It’s not a very large mountain and it’s incredibly bare and exposed, so the skiing is not as adventurous. If you like groomed runs, it’s a decent mountain, but there’s almost no ungroomed terrain, so it can be a bit boring. The mountain is deceiving because it looks like there is un-skied powder between each exposed run, but because of the climate, the snow off-piste is very crunchy and bumpy – not fun for skiing.

But the biggest difference is the lifts. Yllas had one high speed chair lift going half way up the mountain and one (closed) gondola going to the top. Besides that, it’s almost entirely T-bars. We also skied a second resort in Levi and it was the same. None of the terrain is very steep and because the mountain is so bare, you can ski down any face, so I guess it’s a lot cheaper to install a ton of T-bars, with each one only servicing a couple runs. It wasn’t that big a deal, but it does make for a tiring day when you don’t get to sit on the chairs because then you are constantly on your feet.

So it wasn’t my favourite mountain to ski, but it was definitely an experience! We skied all over the mountain in the morning, then after lunch we managed to find one glade run on the far side of the hill, which ended up being our favourite, so we skied that one a few times. There’s a lookout on the way back to Akaslompolo and we timed our departure to catch the sunset from the viewpoint. We didn’t see that many sunsets in Lapland, but the ones we did see were very beautiful. The sky turns purple and pink and reflects off the snow.

On our last day in Yllas we opted to do a dog sledding tour. I was really on the fence about it because they’re not cheap and you can do them in Canada. But I went to Banff last winter and opted not to do one, so I figured now was the time and booked a half day tour with Rami’s Huskies.

Rami’s is located just outside the National Park and we arrived to the predictable symphony of screeching huskies. We didn’t really know what to expect, but we were excited to learn we would sledding in pairs of two, which meant we would get to drive our own sleds! We got a quick lesson in the basics: hand signals, stopping, how to take turns, and when to slow down; and then we prepared for our 16km run in the National Park, with a lunch break at the half way point. The sled is just big enough for one person to sit in it and one person to stand at the back. The person on the back is the driver, so we decided Seth would steer first while I took photos from the sled.

There was about 10 of us on the tour, plus two guides. Each team had 6 dogs, so there was a whopping 42 dogs in our party! When you’re dog sledding in the wilderness, you direct the dogs verbally on where to go, but we were following a track the entire time, so the dogs pretty much just follow each other and the track, so it’s easy to drive. You just need to use the brake whenever the person ahead of you signals because you don’t want to run into the team in front of you.

It’s a bit of a slow start at first because the dogs are extremely excited to run and there’s a very sharp turn early on that the guides want everyone to take slowly. We had a few stop and starts, which are challenging because the dogs were very restless, but eventually we got into the groove and no one fell off their sled the entire trip, which is a bit of a rarity. Seth had his work cut out for him when we kept stopping because the team behind us had a very excitable lead dog named Ginny, and she would get too close to Seth whenever we’d stop and nip at his butt to try and get him to keep going. Our team was a bit slow, so eventually the guides swapped Ginny into our team and we went a lot faster after that!

We had so much fun on this trip! I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but we were thrilled to drive the sleds ourselves and what left the biggest impression on me was how much the dogs love to run. They are loud when you arrive because they are already hooked up to the sleds and they can’t wait to get going. Around the 8km mark we stopped for a break and the dogs mostly settled down for a rest, but as soon as we started getting ready to go again, they were up and eager to keep running.

We had what I can only call a boil-up for lunch, which is popular in Newfoundland (the similarities continue). We got a little fire going to make tea and the guides roasted sausages for us to snack on with some biscuits. We had the chance to question them on the dogs and learned a lot about the sledding industry. At Rami’s, the dogs will run about 32km a day, 5 days a week, at their peak age and health. They’ll either do two 16km rides (like ours), or a 16km ride in the morning, followed by a 10km ride in the afternoon, and a 5km ride in the evening. They regularly swap out which dogs are in which teams, but the dogs all have distinct personalities and some won’t run together, while others will only run with certain dogs, and some will only run as lead dogs.

It takes about 2 years for dogs to mature, so they don’t work full time before then and are mostly in sled dog training. Once they get older, they reduce the number of kilometres they run per week, but they never fully retire the dogs for their mental health. Huskies are an eccentric breed and I can see how it would drive the dog nuts to not run at all after a lifetime of it. Rami’s doesn’t do dog sledding races, only tourism, and they have about 75 dogs in their kennel, which is considered small. Some kennels have up to 450 dogs!

So if you ever find yourself in Lapland, or even anywhere in Canada that offers dogsledding, I would highly recommend it! We really loved it and I wouldn’t hesitate to go again – now I just need to do some research on where I can go in BC!

Rami’s is close to the Lapland Hotels Snow Village, so after we finished our tour we decided to drop by the hotel. It’s a hotel compound made entirely of snow, so it gets re-constructed every year. I think the layout remains the same year after year, but the village is filled with tons of snow sculptures and those change every year depending on the theme. It seems like their most popular year was when they did a game of thrones theme, but when we visited they had an around the world theme and had sculptures of iconic monuments from around the world.

The village comprises of a snow restaurant, a normal restaurant, an ice bar, and a hotel. During the day the hotel has a cover charge to view, so it operates primarily as more of a gallery. There’s about a dozen different themes rooms with varying numbers of beds. Since no one stays there during the day, we were a little bit confused about how it worked because the village is open to visitors from 10am to 10pm. But if you’d like to stay in one of the snow rooms, they are available purely for sleeping starting at 10pm. So basically you check in, sleep in the room, and get hurried out in the morning, so it wouldn’t be my choice, but to each their own! We enjoying viewing the sculptures and then hit the road for our next stop in Levi!