Far out

Day 25: In a few hours, I'm trading in the rugged beauty and shamelessly self-promoting tourist shops of "the end of the world" for the fantastically cheap bustle of Buenos Aires. I've spent nine nights in Ushuaia and I'm sad to say goodbye. I've hiked four of those days and only once was a car required to get to the trailhead. I'll miss being able to see mountains in every direction -- and being on the top of one on a day hike!

The time has come to move on, but this is probably the closest I'll ever come to Antarctica, so I thought I'd post some amazing facts about this least-visited, least-inhabited continent:

Antarctica is the 5th largest of the seven continents.
More than 99% is covered in ice -- which contains about 70% of the world's fresh water.
During the summer, it's twice the size of Australia; in winter, it's four times the size.
(That's two Australias or 50 UKs worth of ice area that forms then breaks up annually!)
Antarctica is classified as a desert. It has 50mm less precipitation than the Sahara.
It holds the record for the world's coldest temperature (-89ºC) and strongest winds (320km/hr).
It has no trees or bushes. Vegegation is limited to about 350 species of lichens, mosses, and algae.
The first recorded sighting of Antarctica wasn't until 1820.
If Antarctica's ice sheets melted, the world's oceans would rise by 60 to 65 meters!
The ice sheets put tremendous pressure on the land mass. If they melted, it would "spring back" about 500m, a proces that would take 10,000 years.
In 2000, an iceberg broke free from the Ross Ice Shelf. It was 295km long and 37km wide, with a surface area of 11,000 sqare meters (similar to Qatar or the Bahamas) above water and ten times that below!
During the feeding season in Antarctica, a full-grown blue whale easts about 4 million krill per day. That's 3,600kg every day for six months.
In 1981, scientists tracked a swarm of krill that they estimated to weigh in at 10 million tons. This is the equivalent of 143 million people (averaging 70kg each) or more than the population of the UK and Germany combined ... and wandering in a group!
The largest land animal in Antarctica is an insect -- a wingless midge less than 0.5 inches long. There are no flying insects because they'd be blown away.
Snow falling at the South Pole takes about 100,000 years to "flow" to the coast of Antarctica before it breaks off as part of an iceberg.

A visit costs several thousands of dollars, especially if you book from the United States or Europe. If you come to Ushuaia, you can get a "cheap" last-minute fare for $4,000, but you might have to wait around for awhile. At over $7,000 a pop, I'm guessing there aren't too many no-shows! While it would be a cool thing to say I've done, I can see a heap of cool places for that amount of money. Therefore, I'll happily settle for seeing an IMAX movie or a National Geographic special as I jet off for Buenos Aires, a city famous for the tango, European architecture, and cheap everything. I can't wait to eat a $5 steak, get my hair cut, and buy some new clothes! I packed some pretty ratty threads for this trip, figuring I could bum around in them in Patagonia and then ditch them in Buenos Aires. Here's hoping I'll head to Santiago in a few weeks with a hip, new look! It might just help me land a job!!!