+ Backpack – Wallet = Tierra del Fuego. Real stories of backpacking travellers who do not need a million bucks to make it happen—just a sense of adventure, courage, and a thirst for life :). Plus a little about boat chores and our plans.
Our young sailor is businesslike as she packs her backpack for a visit:
Right, I need to take my sketchbook, I need to take the binoculars... The view from Roxana’s house is wonderful!
Ladunya and the local yachtsmen’s godmother are going to draw in Roxana’s cosy study, with its panoramic windows overlooking the snow-capped mountains. And the sketchbook is a gorgeous portrait-format pad that the children and I acquired at the end of the world.
Our young sailor and Roxana are sisters forever! Roxana has been appointed Grandma Number Five. Our young sailor’s first four grandmas are called Galya and Sveta, then Nadya and Lena, and now Roxana. There was also Manuela, but Roxana’s image has displaced the previous American “almost-relative” from our young sailor’s heart. Her love for the first four, however, is unshakable and eternal. Lada combines the role of honorary granddaughter with those of student and teacher. She has already had a crochet lesson (and promised to teach Nastya and me too). In return, Lada teaches Roxana Russian words. A year from now, our language will come in very handy for her: to mark the 200th anniversary of the discovery of Antarctica, an entire flotilla of Russian vessels will descend upon Ushuaia and the Antarctic Peninsula. Who will be there to welcome everyone? That’s right—Roxana.
The view from the pier towards the AFASyN yacht club. The second-floor window in the nearest little building is our local office 🙂
Stasia Apelsin
Ushuaia is generally rich in Russian-speaking travellers. And this is not Turkey, mind you, or even Bali. But the travellers of
Tierra del Fuego
are special. Because they are backpackers. People whose few modest belongings fit into a single backpack, which then serves as both home and wardrobe for months and even years.
The first was Ira from St Petersburg. We met by chance when she and her Argentinian friend Mauricio came to the pier to meet Daniil Gavrilov from Rusarc Aurora. Ira did not manage to join us in Antarctica, but she travelled all across Patagonia with her backpack and made it safely to the Argentinian capital.
At the end of March, we became friends with Stasia (
Stasia-Apelsin
) from St Petersburg. She has been travelling around South America for seven years now. She has been to the Amazon rainforest and the Andes, and lived in Patagonia. Stasia also spent four seasons working aboard an expedition cruise ship in Antarctica. It is not easy to join the crew of a ship like that off the street, but somehow things worked out for Stasia and she was taken on in the lowest-ranking position. The following season she moved up a little, then higher still. And now the captain has invited her to work together again for a fifth season. Perhaps when summer comes to Antarctica, Stasia will return. Once again with her backpack :).
Once, someone tried to rob her in Guyana—one of the continent’s most backward, resource-rich yet poorest, and crime-ridden countries. Another time, a car she had hitched a lift in drove deep into the back of beyond and suddenly broke down. The driver and the guy sitting next to him spent a long time fiddling under the bonnet, then asked Stasia to give them a push, and... vanished in a cloud of dust together with her backpack, which contained her clothes, laptop, money...
But there were only two such incidents. Not that many in seven years.
“It’s probably time to change continents,” she says. A few days later, after several connecting flights, Stasia flew off towards Turkey. Over her years in Latin America, Stasia has practically assimilated and, on the whole, is not particularly eager to go home. Most of her friends are here or in the English-speaking world.
“You don’t speak Russian as softly as they do. As Lada does, for example...” observes Leandro, Stasia’s couchsurfing host (the owner of the flat where she is staying for free).
I listen closely and think I can even catch some sharp-edged Spanish notes in her pronunciation.
It was Stasia who dragged us out of our office in the local attic and off on a hike to Martial Glacier, named after the French explorer of Patagonia. Instead of climbing towards the glacier over grey scree, my sailor and young sailor opt for a picnic by the trees. We’re real travellers, after all—why would we climb mountains? We like eating with a beautiful view. Stasia takes a small thermos and a calabash out of her backpack, tops it up with yerba mate, pours in boiling water, and draws the thick, strong Patagonian tea through a metal straw. No sugar or any other treats, just like the locals drink it.
Stasia will hitchhike to Punta Arenas, then take a local flight to Santiago de Chile and continue east, across the ocean. “Perhaps it’s time to settle down somewhere...” our friend muses.
The children and Stasia on that very hike
Lida, super and crazy 🙂
Next to arrive is
Lida
from Donetsk. Four months hitchhiking around Latin America with a backpack, no initial knowledge of the language, and almost no money. Lida is learning Spanish as her adventures unfold. We have a very interesting conversation about topics bordering on politics and are delighted to discover in one another the same normal, healthy common sense.
“Come and sleep at ours!” I invite Lida.
Her couchsurfing days in Ushuaia are coming to an end, and no new hosts have appeared online. Lida modestly declines our offer, afraid she might infect us with her streaming cold. And I notice how this dashing firecracker of a girl combines tough-as-nails grit with a special delicacy. We ply Lida and her runny nose with ginseng tea, but fail to lure her aboard for the night. Lida walks off into the night, promising to return “if anything happens.” ...And we caught her cold anyway.
Lida and our young sailors
Lida has had to spend nights in a fire station and on a bench at a hospital. And on that sniffly evening, absolutely everything went wrong at first, but then came together like a fairytale puzzle. After being turned away from the local fire station, Lida approached a priest and asked if she could stay overnight in the church. The local padre was unmoved by the phrase, “The church is God’s house.” There were no two square metres to spare on the floor of that holy place. But a kind parishioner put Lida up in a hotel room with breakfast. So the following morning, she was hitching a lift in high spirits and with a full stomach.
Yulia and Zhenya—
A Kind of Magic
A few days ago, we found another couple through VKontakte—Yulia and Zhenya from St Petersburg. In five months they accomplished their main goal: travelling all the way across South America from north to south by bus and hitchhiking, with a backpack. They wandered into the slums of Pablo Escobar’s homeland and into an abandoned house with almost-rabid dogs. They sat it out on top of a wall, saw Iguazú Falls and the Atacama, the driest desert in the world. And now they have ended up in our saloon :). Soon they will be flying home. Incidentally, strange but true: we were the first actual Russians they had met in five months of travelling.
The couple planted this thought in our minds: travelling your whole life is not for everyone. By the fifth month, even beautiful places along the way no longer captivate you quite as much, and hitchhiking becomes tiring. Although, of course, Laguna Esmeralda is lovely, and Tierra del Fuego National Park is worth sneaking into without paying, backpacking through windthrow :).
Zhenya and Yulia in our saloon over a cup of tea 🙂
As they told us about their adventures in Latin America over mint tea, we thought, “Ah, what a shame we only met them twice.”
Back to the matter at hand. Afterword
Having sent our young sailor off to visit and our sailor to do a live broadcast, my husband and I amused ourselves alone: we launched the dinghy, hauled one toolbox onto the deck, and shoved another into the half-dismantled aft cabin. Then, one of us outside and the other inside, we set about unbolting the windvane self-steering gear’s bulky structure—the steel tubes supporting the underwater section of our Iron Felix. The bolt holes had begun leaking somewhere back in the Pacific, and now in heavy seas—and not-so-heavy seas—our aft bed ends up sitting in a small pool of salt water. Very pleasant: your skin never dries out, and you get a salt bath right in bed.
The snow-capped mountains and my face, haggard from the tedious unbolting, were reflected in the bay’s smooth water. Then a light breeze sprang up and the dinghy began drifting astern, so in addition to keeping the tools, bolts, and myself above water, I also had to keep the boat at the stern rather than beside the pier’s mussel-encrusted planks.
By sunset we had dealt only with the lower row of bolts, put the berth back together, and collapsed into bed. Our unaccustomed hands ached until morning. Apparently, I’ll have to turn bolts every day now, as a preventive measure. Or better still—head into the mountains with a backpack. Before the leaves fall...
In the next reports, we will tell you about the maintenance work and our plans. Because we will now definitely remain in Ushuaia until the beginning of May, the last month of autumn in Patagonia. We have decided to wait for Fyodor Konyukhov. Just think: which makes it more pleasant for a man to row through icy storms—towards a place where none of his own people are waiting, or towards a place where someone is?
We are waiting. And every day we send him strength across the 800 miles he still has left.
Thank you!
Friends, thank you for your sound advice and warm comments! You continue to keep our spirits up through repairs in the icy wind and work in our attic office. You are the best in the world!
And special thanks to our mega-support group, who keep the ship’s coffers topped up through
Paypal.me/TravelyFamily
. Thank you to Dmitry S. from Leningrad Oblast 🙂 and to Robertas! To Alexey R. from the USA, Viktor S. from Leningrad Oblast, and the user named Sedmoto, who sent us warm greetings through Yandex.Money. You are helping make the world more accessible!