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 End of the World, Beginning of Everything!Back to Not in Kansas AnymoreBy Daniel Lins - 2008-12-07
Buenos Dias mis amigos y familia! Good day my friends and family! We are safely in Ushuaia, Argentina: the southernmost city in the world! We arrived on Wednesday with no major issues. All of our luggage arrived intact, and we didn’t have any major problems in any of the airports. In Bogota, Colombia, Dan and I even left the airport for part of our 8:40 hour layover and toured the city. People say Colombia is not a place for tourists to walk alone, but God protected us from any possible harm and we stayed in the safer areas of the city. The people are soo friendly! The most friendly we’ve met yet! It is hard to imagine danger in a place with so much vibrant color and smiling faces. Really, so many people just stared and stared at us. I’m not sure if they hadn’t seen many gringos, if they were astonished that we’d be in their part of the city, or if they just thought we were attractive. In Santiago and Punta Arenas, Chile, and in Ushuaia, Argentina, people don’t give us the time of day. Very few people even look at us, compared to those wonderful people in Bogota! "But don’t be fooled," one missionary told me (I sat next to Maria on the plane ride from there): the nice people are really nice, and the mean people are REALLY mean. One Wednesday morning (three days ago), after an all-nighter spent packing our gear and 26 hours of flights and layovers, we arrived in Ushuaia to spend 4 hours assembling our bikes in the middle of the airport. They eventually kicked us out to recieve the next plane, and we were on our way with bicycles groaning from the excessive weight. We got some dinner and headed out of town to sleep in a cow pasture around midnight. The land is soo beautiful here! Who are we that God would allow us to see such magnificent glory! For the last two days, we’ve made camp in a hidden cove on the Canal Beagle. The sun sets around 9:30pm, and comes up well before 5am. For now, we’re unloading stuff as quickly as we can. All four of us had so much weight that our bikes shake when we turn. Check http://maps.google.com/ and copy and paste our lattitude and longitude (-54.819104,-68.170413) in the text box. Then click sattellite view to see our grassy paradise! Check to the west of that for the city of Ushuaia! So far, we’ve seen cows, a seal, skuas (predatory water birds), some sort of otter, foxes, and many insects and dogs! The land here is so beautiful. I guess you’ll just have to look at the pictures we’re uploading! The people in Ushuaia are primarily adventure tourists. The whole town caters to the foreigners who travel here to climb glaciers and mountains, see Antarctica, and glimpse the natural beauty. Many people are like us: adventurers from other countries. But we have only met one couple from America. Also, most other people here are big spenders! Some people I’ve spoken with spend 50,000 US$ for 3 weeks here! All the prices are inflated due to the tourism bent of the town, but we’ll be gone soon. There are so many natural wonder here to see, such as El Chalten, Los Torres del Paine, Antarctica, Puerto Natales, Puerto Mont, Port Williams, Beagle Canal, Magellan Strait, and many volcanoes and waterways. Our new friend Garrett from the Netherlands is here to see most of them! While we’re here, we ride 6 miles into town each day to use internet in a restaurant or at a youth hostel for free!! Everywhere else, the un-savvy must pay. We’re also charging the laptops now (at this moment). We have some solar panels for charging in the field. I just ran around town (~22 blocks) trying to find a store with a wall adapter for the argentine plugs. Everyone kept telling me to try this store, or that store. Finally, I found one in a hardware shop. It was used, and they just made up a price for it. Oh well! So it goes! Our plan is to stick around town for the next few days, check out the glacier north of town, view some of the national parkland, and then head northeast toward El Desdemona shipwreck. From there, we’ll probably ride west and take a ferry to Punta Arenas and then procceed northward through Chile’s national parks. Love you all, Daniel 
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