Sunrises and Winds in Ushuaia

Photo credit: the early morning awakening O'Canada.

So established as a prison and port town, you might not expect too much from the town of Ushuaia.  However, due to recent policies promoting manufacturing and tourism in the south of Argentina, Ushuaia is actually booming.  Apparently 15 years ago it was an unrecognizable, basically undeveloped little outpost,  and 15 years from now it will be unrecognizable due to its growth.  But right now, it is a cute little city.

Anne, Mark, HBomb and O'Canada rented a little cabin overlooking the Beagle Channel.  The Channel was named after a ship called The Beagle.  Does that sound familiar to anyone?  If it does, the answer is yes, it is in reference to the same one you are thinking of.  That ship and its famous passenger explored down here before going on to it's more famous exploits on the Pacific side of South America.

Our group decided to walk across the down town en route to the prison museum.  Unexpectedly, they ran into a street protest.  We had arrived in Ushuaia just after the presidential elections, so we kind of expected that this might be a political protest.  However, it appears to was just a standard, labor union marching down the streets protest.  Noisy, but peaceful and really not that big of a deal.

One thing that is kind of a big deal in Ushuaia is the winds.

Apparently due to the Andes Mountains.... the winds coming off of the Pacific Ocean... maybe the rotation of the earth.... the cams on these specs.... well, frankly, I don't really know why, but there are really strong winds blowing west to east in Ushuaia.  The winds are so strong, in fact, that they can cause trees to grow in weird ways.  For example:

HBomb and Mark decided to see how strong the winds really were.  I mean, it can't be THAT strong can it?

You get the best grip if you hold on to the eye sockets.

This whole experience reminded Mark of an iconic ad from the 80s.  Anyone remember this?

Tagline: After 500 plays, our high fidelity TAPE still delivers high fidelity.

It basically looks like the trees were the guy in the Maxell ad.  (side note, that was actually an ad for cassette tapes - how old am I?).  Apparently, though, Mark is not the only one who saw the trees and thought of advertising.  Apparently, these "flag trees" are kind of famous as a symbol of Ushuaia and Fin del Mundo and are used to sell everything from wine to beer (ok, so maybe that's not a huge range...)