If you like hiking and you are traveling in a place surrounded by mountains, you are not likely to get bored. Even if you think you've done everything interesting, there will always be more to do. During my travel days in the city of Ushuaia, I went for a walk almost every afternoon, which allowed me to see the touristy places as well as the not so touristy ones. I liked this because I could have the most classic postcards of the place, but also those that usually visitors do not know. This is the case of the landscape that can be seen from the summit of Mount Susana, perhaps not so well known but worth knowing .
One of the things I liked most about Ushuaia, unlike the rest of the places I've been, is that there was Uber service. This travel platform allows cheap transfers, even at half price compared to regular cabs. Since there are not so many public bus networks in the city, having this option was very useful to get to those places that cannot be reached on foot. Also, there were evenings when I was alone, like this day, so I had to pay for a whole trip on my own, but with Uber it was not so expensive .
After checking where to go, I decided on Monte Susana, whose trailhead is located 5 km from the city center. For this trip I had paid about $5 and arrived in less than 10 minutes, which seemed more than affordable and a good plan for my day. The thing is that in that area I had no signal and I didn't know how I was going to ask for a car to go back, but I thought "5 km more in addition to the hike I have planned, it won't be a big problem" .
You could tell that this mountain was not so touristy from the moment you arrived and all its signage was lying on the ground. At least they left it there and didn't take it down, because I helped myself with that to get my bearings. In the first part of the road there was a path that shortened the path of the cars and had a fairly significant slope, so you gained altitude quickly. Significant unevenness always means great demand for the legs, but this was later compensated with a gradual ascent inside the lenga forest .
Although the path was marked with yellow signs, the trail was not very well trodden so you had to move carefully. In all this stretch I did not come across absolutely no one, which gave an idea of how little visited the place was. When I finally reached the viewpoint I had planned, I sat down for a while to rest, even though I had been walking for just over an hour. At this viewpoint there was a seat where you could sit and contemplate the scenery ❣️.
Ushuaia is really beautiful: the southernmost city in the world began as a small village for the most dangerous prisoners in the country and years later became this incredible tourist place. What amazed me most about this viewpoint is that you could see the entire peninsula where the city's airport is located, parallel to it. You can also see from there what was the old airport, perpendicular to the city. In the early years, airplanes had to take off and land passing over the city and in a much smaller space for maneuvers, which caused several accidents. The new runway looks noticeably larger and now the planes arrive over the Beagle Channel, without flying over the urbanization .
After sitting there for a while, the first person I saw all afternoon appeared, after the Uber driver. It was Patricia, a woman who was also traveling alone because "her husband does not like to travel and she was not going to stay without seeing Ushuaia". We quickly became friends, as with those people with whom there is a good vibe from the moment. We chatted a bit about why she decided to go to this not so touristy place and she told me that it was because 600 meters above sea level seemed easy for someone who does not walk regularly and that was the case, because she got there without any problems .
From the amount of rocks that were piled up very close to this viewpoint, I knew that many people made this place "their summit". When you got to this part, everything looked pretty flat, but if you looked in the direction of the Chilean border, you could see what the real summit was. Patricia also wanted to go to the summit, so we both continued on our way a little further. In this part, the trail was no longer well marked, but there was only one direction to continue ascending so we went and in less than half an hour we reached the real summit .
Unfortunately we could not stay long because it was too windy, but we had good views of the Beagle Channel, Tierra del Fuego National Park and some snow-capped peaks already belonging to our neighboring country. Before going there I had investigated that there was another way down from the mountain towards the park, but with Patricia we concluded that we would go back the "same way". Well, I don't know what happened, but we got a bit lost in the forest and ended up going down a different trail than the one we both took at the beginning. The important thing is that when you are coming down a mountain, whenever you are descending you always get to the street level even if you take a longer path, and that's how it was .
Luckily for me, my new companion was another regular user of the "hitchhiking" mode, so this is what we did to get back to the city. Within minutes of getting off, a man and his son got us to the center faster than we thought possible. This allowed Patricia and I some extra time to stop by a bar for a few beers. It may not have been so fit on our part, but at least we had gotten enough exercise during the day in the Susana Mount .
