My flight to Ushuaia was scheduled for 4:40 am. A nightmare. The absolute worst flighttime on my RTW- Ticket. As always, when leaving for the airport in the middle of the night, I couldn’t find any sleep. So I landed in Ushuaia at 8 am with an immense lack of that very. Plus an upset stomach (no idea what from). This prologue is intended to explain why I didn’t do anything during the two days that I spent in Ushuaia (which is, oddly enough, pronounced Ussuaia – with a sharp “s”). No hike in the National Park, no boat ride on the Beagle Canal. I walked through only half of the tiny town and had tea at a lovely place (thanks for the tip, P!) with the most brilliant loo signs:

The only productive thing on my agenda was getting my hair cut. The very friendly girl at the reception marked quite a large number of hair salons on the map (there seem to be more than in BA!) and I decided to give one a try where her mother (“who has short and curly hair, too”) gets her hair cut. It was tiny, cramped and a bit filthy, but I decided to ignore all this and to finally get it done. I knew that no one would be able to speak english and hence rattled down what I had been taught by the receptionist: “Corte de pelo, no muy corto, tengo rollos” (Haircut, not too short, I have curls), followed by an upward movement with my hands and a “whooop” sound to demonstrate that curly hair tends to move up when dry. I explained how I wanted my hair cut by showing a couple of fotos taken by my hairdresser back home, but the guy seemed to only take a short look, nodded and started cutting. No need to say that I was anxious to see the result of his work. While sitting still my eyes wandered across the salon, registering loads of hair (not mine) on the floor, the furniture and also on the neck brush in front of the mirror. But there was no turning back now! I was hoping he would not use or at least clean that thing for me, but only minutes later I saw him taking it and before I could protest, he used it to clean (?!) my neck. Yikes! Admittedly, he did quite a good job with cutting my hair. And it probably was the cheapest haircut I ever had: I only paid 120 Argentinian Pesos (~12 Euros)!! It certainly was an experience….!

Horrific foto: