Day 3 (Part 1): End of the World Train, Road, Post Office and More

What a beautiful day! The sun was out shining the whole day, it was cool enough but not cold, the wind was very mild, it is like a cold green tea with a touch of honey if that makes sense to describe the weather today. The morning breakfast was nice, very homey. This B&B is run by two brothers, this morning I met the brother of the omg guy from yesterday. His brother looks more like Lang Lang, that kind of artistic musician, curly hair and the whole ball of wax. Extremely friendly. But anyway, he was not one of the highlights of my day, a good starter maybe.

My tour guide arrived to pick me up at exactly 8:30am. I got into the minivan, there were already an older Argentinean couple and a quiet woman who might be just a little older than me. After me, we picked up Samantha, another chinese girl who turned out to be a solo traveler from Hong Kong too. What a coincidence! Lastly we picked up 4 more adults and 4 kids! Holy crap, I thought. Those youngins better keep the noise down. Actually one of the youngest ones was surprised that I said gracias when she picked up my camera cap for me. She said, ‘oh he can speak spanish too.’ I said poquito poquito, a shy smile and I walked away.

We arrived at the End of the Train station, the train were in green and red... very x’masy as I expected. But I was still kind of excited, I mean it was the morning, it was my first tour here. Ok, I took some pictures of you, xmas train. The station was packed, we were on train #1, went in and sat down, each cabin have 24-30 seats, 6 people facing each other in each section, kind of a packed sardines like, they didn’t waste any space. The train moved, the stream, the whistle, we were getting into the wilderness, well kind of. In term of seeing scenery from the train, you could not really see much, because of the steam coming down from the head train. But we did we passed by some creeks, colorful trees and snow cap mountains..etc, and we did make a stop in the middle where we saw a small waterfall and I could finally took some pictures of the head train which was pretty cool. Kind of magical, like Julie Andrews is going to pop out suddenly kind of magical.

Continued our journey, I was seated in front of another older couple and their daughter, the old man was very kind to me, and let me take his seat which was easier to look outside. Just before we arrived the train terminal, he tried to speak to me in Spanish. I said no entiendo (don’t understand). His wife spoke in English to me instead, saying if you like this kind of scenery, you ought to go to ba ba, ba ba ba…. All Spanish me again, of course, I nodded and smiled as a good chinese boy would do, but I had no clues whatever she just said. But they are very nice. I really appreciate these people, especially when I am traveling alone, to feel a little welcome and a touch of sincerity, a little pat on the shoulder saying there are still some very nice people out there, however small and minor they are, they are everywhere. I like to think that.

I didn’t mind the train ride actually, we were picked up by the minivan with the guide and driver again. I was ecstatic when we arrived at our next stop, we arrived at the last post office in the end of the world, the one was featuring in one of the challenges in Amazing Race, a tiny tinned house by the lake. OMG, I didn’t know we would come here. I was so not prepared for this. I checked it out like a kid just opened a lego box. Not enough, it was actually a real post office that was open for business today. Oh-my-god~~, there were postmen in there too and they moved. Oh heaven! I went in, quickly pulled out a few postcards I bought yesterday, scrambled to find a few addresses. Those lucky ones who I happened to have prepared your addresses before this trip, you will get a postcard from the end of the world, you lucky bitches! Please don’t mind my poor handwriting, I only had 20 mins in that place, and I had to write whatever I can think of and write it very fast. I also got another official stamp, a big one, on my passport for visiting this place. Seriously, that alone was enough for my day, and it was only 10am in the morning. Huge surprise!

I was already on cloud 9 and we visited a few more things, like another lake, we saw a fox on the road, a beaver dam, and we ended at literally the end of the road in the world, the Pan American Highway from Alaska to Ushuaia. Another surprise! Stunning views of some lakes and mountains, all these end of the world train, end of the road, the last post office at the last frontier of humanity. I mean Wow!

I expected to see landscapes, fauna and flora, and I ended up with so much more. Is life interesting? And I only had a short lunch break, had a flat bread that was really good. I need to write another post on foods later. But I went on to my penguin tour at 2:30pm, which will be in the next post. The truth of the matter is I really should get to bed. More about penguins tomorrow. :P

Oh, one more little side story, when I was on the train, there was this recording playing talking the history of Ushuia, it was in Spanish first, then English read by this British voice. I found it interesting given that the Folklands war happened almost right there. I thought they would have some uneasy sentiment over the British.... and they did, look at this:

A few more sights and sounds of this morning tour: