Besides being a perfect place to enjoy long walks in the mountains or short rides in the city, Ushuaia's surroundings also offer space for good drives. Due to its location on the map, this city is entered and exited by the same route if you arrive by land, so even before entering the city you can enjoy beautiful landscapes. The scenic stretch of National Route 3 offers a lot of photographic corners that are worth seeing. And if you arrived in the city by plane like me, you definitely can't miss a visit to this route.

Ushuaia is a city located inside Tierra del Fuego Island and the fastest way to get there is by plane. However, if once there your intention is to visit the mountains to the north, you must take National Route 3. This route is very popular for the most famous trekking of all, the one to the Esmeralda Lagoon, 18 km away from the city, but on the way you can also see interesting landscapes just by getting out of the car for a while.

During my stay in Ushuaia I had the opportunity to make many new friends through Couchsurfing. Most of them were local people who were eager to walk around a bit with tourists and show them around. In the first few days I met Saul, who told me about how beautiful this route is. He was the one who offered me a personalized tour to get to know these places better. Our first stop was at Mirador del Valle Carbajal, 14 km from the city. In this place there is a space prepared to receive visitors, with informative signs and space to rest, in addition to the view of the mountains.

The next stop on our drive was about 6 km further on. In the middle, we passed the parking lot to go to Laguna Esmeralda and it was full of cars, as usual. But we kept going until we reached another less crowded point on the route, called Valle de Tierra Mayor. This place was a large field with peat and mountains in the background, plus a restaurant and service center.

This valley was completely clear in the spring, but in the winter is when it is covered with snow and functions as a cross-country ski slope. In the meantime, it is just a valley where you can walk freely, as long as the peat allows you to do so. In case you don't know, peat is decomposing organic material that has been produced where there used to be glaciers millions of years ago. These soils are wet and appear spongy, so you should walk carefully on them if you don't want to get your feet wet.

Visiting these valleys is a quiet option if you want to see a little more of Ushuaia's landscapes without having to walk so far. At the time of our afternoon visit, the restaurant was closed but we still took the opportunity to walk around a bit, while my new Couchsurfing friend told me what it was like to live in Ushuaia permanently and I told him all about the journey I had made to get there. I like the experience of meeting people through this traveler's app, because you can always have interesting moments like these.

What I liked about this walk was that we were able to do it on the half afternoon I had free on a Saturday after work. Getting 20 kilometers away from the city doesn't take that long and allows you to see beautiful places like these. Even though it was in the middle of spring, it was still very cold and the weather was quite changeable, but that's all part of visiting Ushuaia. Meeting a new friend and sharing a walk together was a good anecdote during the trip: I was glad to have visited these beautiful places without having to walk for hours and hours.

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When I first read that the city of Ushuaia is only 6 metres above sea level I was quite surprised. In spite of being a low place, it is possible to find mountains with interesting slopes that test your physical endurance. The highest peak of this city is Mount Olivia at only 1300 metres high, but it is only reserved for professional climbers. Instead, normal people can visit other hills to climb on foot, such as the Cerro Cortez, considered of medium difficulty. It may not be the highest of them all, but it still takes your breath away .

Cerro Cortez is one of the closest mountains to the city centre and, according to what I had read, it would only take me about 5 hours to hike to the top and back. This time was perfect for a morning plan before I had to work at the hostel, so I took an Uber to the trailhead, about 6 km from where I was. The highest point of this mountain is 750 masl, but that drive was mostly uphill, so the final elevation gain I had left to walk was only 500 metres.

One thing I like about Ushuaia is that most of the trails are well signposted. Of all the trails I've done, I've rarely had to resort to an offline map. That's why it gave me peace of mind to go trekking alone, because I knew that the chances of getting lost were low. Also, this particular mountain is very close to the city, so I never lost my internet signal. And in case of any emergency, you could call the rescue number 103, which luckily in all my long stay, I never had to do.

I never knew how to write the name of this mountain properly, as in some places it appears as ‘Cortez’ (surname) and on the trail it says ‘Cortés’ (adjective, polite). I liked it better as a surname, so I wrote it that way. What was certain was that the gradient on this mountain was interesting. Although it was a 3 kilometres one way trail, I think that all the elevation gain was concentrated in 2.5 kilometres. My legs gave it their all, but as always, a big elevation gain means good views faster.

I didn't meet anyone on the way, and that's because this mountain is not one of the most touristy in Ushuaia. I thought that maybe I would meet some locals when I was near the summit, but the only thing that was there was a terrible wind. At times I had to sit down and take shelter because I swear it was pushing me. Keeping a steady pace was difficult and I didn't want any accidents.

Despite the wind, I reached the summit and everything looked beautiful from there. The weather made the clouds circulate very fast, changing the illumination of the landscape every minute. Even this also made the moment magical. From this summit I could get a good 360° view of the whole city of Ushuaia, the Beagle Channel, Mount Olivia and even the mountain ranges inside the National Park. I like the high peaks, but the ones that are not so high also offer landscapes a bit closer to see them in detail.

I found a rock shelter where I could take some shelter and have my mountain lunch (a small, non-nutritious sandwich and an apple). I stayed as long as I could, until the humble freezing breezes of the end of the world forced me to come down before my face froze even more. The good thing is that coming down is always a bit quicker than going up, and once back in the forest, there was no trace of the gusts from up there. And on the way up, I found a good location for my new Worldmappin sticker.

I usually take a little less time than the signs say, but this time, the whole route took me the exact five hours it was estimated to take. I even imagined it would be a bit more difficult, but all that elevation gain was challenging. Anyway, the views from there were beautiful and being able to see the city of Ushuaia from a new point was very rewarding. All this without detracting from how convenient it was to get off the trail and have a signal to call an Uber back: if I could have driven to the summit, I probably would have done it .

❤️ Hope you liked this post! Thanks for reading. ❤️

❤️¡Espero que les haya gustado este post! Gracias por leer. ❤️

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Although the trip to Chile had passed more quickly than I wanted it to, its end meant no great sorrow for me either. This was because instead of returning to my home in Buenos Aires, I had planned my return to Ushuaia, in Tierra del Fuego. Summer was approaching, the best time not to feel so cold at the end of the world, so I wanted to return to take advantage of the pleasant weather and enjoy the mountains a little more. When I got back, there still weren't that many guests in the hostel where I was volunteering, so if I wanted to socialise a bit more, I had to resort to my trusty tool Couchsurfing. Once again, it worked perfectly .

Having returned from the neighbouring country after my trip with M brought me back to the reality of what it was like to travel alone. This is no problem for me because I love socialising, but the problem is when there are no people around to do it. But thanks to knowing how Couchsurfing works, I was almost always able to find occasional friends to go out with. And as I like diverse groups, where it is possible to exchange many anecdotes, I made sure that we were at least four people per outing (incidentally, to share the taxi to the trailheads).

For those who are not familiar with Couchsurfing, this is an application for travellers whose main purpose is to obtain temporary accommodation in private homes. In this app, there are people who offer a place in their home and travellers who can request this type of stay for free. The main purpose is to share a good time with the hosts while getting to know the place you are passing through, and also to save on accommodation. But as I never need this, as I have my stay at the hostel where I volunteer, I just use another section of the app called ‘Hangouts’. This function allows you to make your profile available for a walk at that moment: it's like a ‘Tinder’ for travellers, in which if you match with another person or persons, a chat is generated so that you can chat and plan a casual walk.

Throughout my stay in Ushuaia, which lasted almost six months in total, I used Couchsurfing Hangouts dozens of times. This allowed me to meet many people from all over, with whom we shared treks, pub crawls, walks in the city and even meetings in the hostel I was staying in. The first Couchsurfing meeting I did after returning from Chile was with three guys, one from England, one from Turkey and one from Argentina. We decided to trek to the Cinco Hermanos Lagoon, where we first went to the Bridal Veil Waterfall. I knew it but the boys didn't, so we stopped there for a moment to take pictures.

The stretch to the waterfall was short but quite steep, but the four of us were experienced trekkers so it was no problem for us. What was a problem was communicating with the guys from England and Turkey, as my English is very bad. However, I gave it my best shot and I think we exchanged some good ideas in the time we shared together. They were also able to practice their Spanish with me, although their level of the opposite language was much better than mine.

The outings I organised on Couchsurfing were always fun, and in the process saved us a bit of money, as well as having a good time. A taxi to the start of this trail and back to the city cost $20, which is not much for four people. By the way, we all took away a language lesson, as well as having seen a nice place. When I told my friends that I was going to the mountains with people I'd only spoken to for a few minutes in the morning via an app, they were quite worried, but after all the time in Ushuaia doing that, they relaxed. Now I have Couchsurfing contacts all over the world: I just have to get on a plane and go visit them ❤️.

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