Kelly and Quang's Global Roam

Today we hiked and hiked and hiked through Ushuaia´s nearby National Park. It was chilly. It was windy. It was overcast. It was damp. It was beautiful.



The ground was soft. Often, it felt as if we were walking on Nerf balls.



Orange puffs the size of ping-pong balls covered the path and the trees. They were a fungus. We stomped on a few to see what would happen. They acted like a sponge. They easily collapsed and squirted some fluid, and then returned to their full, rounded shape. Our guide told us they were edible if they were still little. One woman in our group plucked one off a tree and ate it. We all stood around her, waiting for her to throw up or something, but she simply smiled and said, "It tastes like nothing!"

A condor, Argentina´s reclusive national bird, circled above us, looking for food. It flew so low and so close we could see its bald head with our bear eyes. We were stunned, and so was our guide. Even he stood still and said, "Wow."



We reached a look-out point where the wind sucked our breath away. Quang and I leaned into the wind and it held us upright. It whistled in our ears and we felt like it was a Minnesota blizzard.