A Ride to the End of the World
Day one of the trip, hitchhiking out of Ushuaia. The lift ended at a birthday party on a private lake.
Ushuaia — January 2019
An Airbnb flat. Me, Eden and Rotem. Finally we’re here: the end of the world.
The road here hadn’t been simple. Only two days earlier we’d been at the airport in Buenos Aires and they cancelled our flight because of a pilots’ strike.
But that’s it. The sense of adventure is starting to come out. The big trip is beginning.
We unpack the gear and open up the guidebook, and decide unanimously: first day of the trip, let’s go with the known and the familiar. Let’s go to Laguna Esmeralda.
We look at the maps and the recommendations, and then I said to the girls: listen, maybe this is mad right at the start, but let’s try hitchhiking. I speak Spanish and we’re a mixed group of guys and girls — what could go wrong? A few hesitations, it being the first day and all, but we go for it.
We take a bus out to the eastern exit from Ushuaia and wait.
It’s the weekend and plenty of cars pass us, Argentine holidaymakers with the radio up loud and a mate in hand.
After a quarter of an hour a woman stops and asks where to. We tell her Laguna Esmeralda and she answers with a smile: get in, I’ll take you.
Delighted, grinning, we get into the car and start the usual small talk about life. Where are you from, what do you do — honestly, a very ordinary conversation. Until one moment, when everything changes.
The woman asks: is somebody waiting for you at the lagoon?
I tell her no, and ask why.
Listen, she says, we’ve only known each other a short time, but you have good energy and you’re lovely. I’m on my way now to my family’s summer house on the lake. It’s my mother’s birthday — good food, a breathtaking view. Do you want to join?
What, us? It’s too good to be true. I confer with the girls, who ask me to find out more.
The details come into focus and we realise we haven’t got into an ordinary lift. This isn’t just any woman. This is Señora Fernández.
Fernández is a Spanish name, a descendant of the Spanish conquest that ruled all of South America. And us? We’re with a member of the family descended from the people who ruled all the land of Ushuaia — and who legally still own it to this day.
So we understood the situation and decided: if a Fernández invites you, you don’t refuse.
Extraordinary landscapes on the road, and Señora Fernández’s lovely dog.
From here the drive becomes very entertaining.
At almost every lake, forest or uninhabited stretch she says proudly: this belongs to my family.
We get a VIP tour, and before we reach her parents’ summer house we stop in a small village to do some shopping — where there isn’t a person who doesn’t stop to shake Señora Fernández’s hand, and we, as her companions, get an extraordinary amount of attention.
And our Fernández isn’t remotely impressed by her own status. She treats us as equals, buys us a keyring as a souvenir and a pastry from the village’s famous bakery.
We leave the village and head back to the summer house, and the drive goes along a side road: vast lakes, beaches, breathtaking views.
After all that, the moment of truth arrives. We enter a locked reserve, and after a few minutes of off-road driving we reach the family house.
We walk into the warm wooden house and receive hugs and kisses that are warmer still. You can understand where Señora Fernández’s upbringing came from. From the first moment, they shower us with affection.
Memories from the Fernández house.
Ah, the Fernández family. Spaniards of the old kind.
A big, funny family with prejudices about anyone who isn’t them.
Long hours of conversation about cultures and Argentine slang, a nerve-shredding card game, a particularly good stew and birthday celebrations.
We don’t really notice the time, because in Ushuaia it doesn’t get dark until midnight.
Towards night the moment arrives to return to reality, and in the same car that stopped for us twelve hours earlier on the edge of Ushuaia, we head back to the city and back to reality — but we come back charged with energy and with extraordinary experiences.
That’s how you start a trip.
So what do we take from this road story?
Hitchhiking, especially in Ushuaia: cheap, special, a way to meet locals. Responsibly, of course.
Stay flexible and open. Don’t run a packed schedule mapped out day by day. If we’d had to see Laguna Esmeralda that day, we’d have politely refused and missed this extraordinary experience.