Tierra del Fuego

After a couple of wonderful weeks in Patagonia, I took a short flight to Tierra del Fuego and am now at the very bottom tip of Argentina in the city of Ushuaia. Before leaving Patagonia, I had several more glorious days of hiking in the glacier national park. The weather was amazing...blue skies, sunny, warm...probably in the 70s. Oddly, a lot of the other hikers don´t seem to appreciate the fine weather. As I walked in a dry weave, super wicking, light-weight shirt and wafer thin pants with my various layers of jackets, raincoats, etc. tied around my waist, I would pass many a trekker decked out in wool hat, fleece jacket, waterproof pants, rainwear. I was baffled as I was sweating a bit, I can´t imagine how they must have felt. I kind of got the impression that they had bought all of the gear and by golly, they were going to use it. El Chalten was a nice, albeit brand new, little town and the hiking was so accessible. I met a few nice people and the girls running the hostel were great.
Sadly, I had a bout with bedbugs back in El Calafate (the town before El Chaltén. Because I dress from the neck down, completely covered, at night and put Deep Woods Off 95% DEET bug spray on my face and hands, in order to prevent the bed bug bites, I only got bites in the areas that I missed...evidently my hairline and just under my chin. The thing is, when I get bit, the bites swell up to the size of a nickel, or in some cases a quarter so when I check into a new place, I always feel that they are sizing me up as some sort of leper. Sadly still, while I was carefully examining the inflated neck bites in the mirror, I noticed something more alarming still. It seems that at some point, and completely unaware to me, I have developed a turkey neck. I am horrified. I suspect you all are thinking, "you´ve just noticed that? you´ve had a turkey neck for years." Well, I remained blissfully unaware of this wattle until just a few days ago and now I´m rather distraught. I have had grey hair and wrinkles since elementary school so those haven´t really been so upsetting to me, but the turkey neck? I´m horrified as I think there is really nothing to do about that. Unless, say, someone gave me a free voucher for plastic surgery because Argentina is certainly the place to be if you are looking to go under the knife for cosmetic reasons. I guess, at least, I won´t have to make a clever costume for Thanksgiving this year.
I have a few days here in town before embarking on the "Antarctic Dream", my boat for Antarctica. Today, I will do some chores such as doing the paperwork for my trip, loading up on motion sickness tablets, getting my boots repaired, etc. My hiking boots, were pretty worn out but I figured they would last me for this one last trip with them. Evidently I was wrong. They are in flithers. The tread on the bottom, on both boots has worked itself loose and flips and flaps as I walk. I had one small piece glued down some weeks ago back in Chile by a really surly cobbler (the only unfriendly person that I met in all of Chile). I´m hoping they can do they same here...just to get a few more weeks use out of them and then I will leave them behind as I tend to do when I travel...discarding old and unwanted items across the continent.