Day 216: Ushuaia vs. El Calafate

Puerto Natales, Chile – El Calafate, Argentina

Woooohoooooo, Argentina! 20th country!
For the past few weeks, I had been struggling to decide whether to go to Ushuaia or El Calafate after finishing up in Puerto Natales.

Ushuaia claims to be El fin de mundo (The end of the world) because of its location. It´s right on the southernmost tip of South America. Although, geographically speaking, Puerto Williams of Chile is even more south. In any case, it would be cool to be able to claim that I’d been in the end of the world. Another main reason that people visit Ushuaia is to catch a ship to go to Antartica.

As for El Calafate, I never heard of this place until a couple weeks ago. But upon googling the pictures of its main attraction, Glaciar Perito Moreno, it’s almost impossible to be so close by and not to visit.

An Argentinian friend of mine, Joe, posted on his facebook asking his friend to vote for either Ushuaia or El Calafate. Ushuaia won by far. I planned to go whichever place got the higher vote but had to let that idea go due to timing issue.

Ushuaia is 18 hours away from Puerto Natales and El Calafate only 5 hours. So off to El Calafate it was. Besides, if next time I do make it to Ushuaia, I will definitely want to take a trip to Antartica from there.

Quick cheat sheet: For American passport holder, crossing into Argentina via land border will save you  $140 visa fee that you´d have had to pay if flying in. Same thing goes for entering Chile.