After the end of the world, Part I

After that, how did we spend Boxing Day? On a bus travelling across miles of Patagonian pampa. A very comfortable bus, but nonetheless, a journey of about 12 hours, much of which was on unpaved roads, through Chile. It was our one real experience on this trip of how real backpackers do it, and, although an experience I will not be repeating with alacrity, nonetheless valuable. Ushuaia is described locally as El Fin del Mundo, or the end of the world/earth, and getting from it to anywhere else is necessarily complicated. For a start, anyone travelling to anywhere else in Argentina has to pass through Chile, crossing the border twice; there's simply no other way. The distance from Ushuaia to our final destination, Punta Arenas, is not that far on the map, even allowing for the lack of crow flying and potentially poor roads, so we could not understand why it was billed as an 11 hour journey. That is until after we crossed the Argentine border, hit two or three miles of unpaved road before the Chilean border check, and were held there for approaching two and a half hours. I am at a loss to explain the reason for this, all that happened was that we had our passports stamped and ran our luggage through an X-ray machine to ensure that we were not attempting to bring in any fresh fruit...you're there ahead of me, because of course, the Brother had a cunning plan involving packed lunch, tea etc, with apples and bananas featuring strongly, and, of course, we had to cram these, plus his four-day-old beef sandwich, before we hit the border post. The hold-up at the border was far worse if you were not on a bus - our driver did the formalities for us - others had to queue in strong cold winds for a long time before having to pass through the Ministry of Agriculture cursory check of the car - this involves an official leaning into the car at the front, the back and the boot, lifting the odd bag and then waving them on. So all answers as to why this takes up to three hours, on a postcard, please. Arrived at Punta Arenas, and dragged our wheelies up the hill to our hotel which was a yoga and meditation centre, with profound sayings stencilled on the wall, and chappatis for breakfast. Actually, lovely, clean, spacious, peaceful and very welcoming, and a strange contrast with the slightly down at heel feel of the city. There are loads of rather crumbling Art Deco buildings, dusty streets and miles of wires. This was an important part of colonial expansion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with many of the leading figures from UK or Croatia. We visited a house belong to one of these families (Braun Menedez), an Art Nouveau splendour gracing the main square, sadly somewhat neglected, but still impressive. What was interesting was the faux brocade on the walls (actually cleverly printed), fake marble fireplace and painted "wood inlay", and the fact that the master bedroom was on the ground floor. All that ostentatious wealth encrusting the walls and windows was fine, but what was the most interesting was the basement with the maids' rooms, rather luxurious bathroom, and the kitchen, with lots of familiar household names on jars and tins from the UK.