Packing Is Going To Be Tricky...
⬅ previous ⬆intro next ➡Day 12 ~ January 25 ~ Ushuaia
The last view from our cabin. Here we are in Ushuaia, the capital of Argentinian Tierra del Fuego.
Amanda hasn't slept too well, but she's survived the Drake Passage. There's no doubt now that we made the right decision to fly out rather than start with a sea crossing.
Buses will take us from the port to our hotel. We can see the previous group boarding.
It's Me-An. Bye!
Our turn now. As we walk down the gangway we can see our luggage is waiting, always a good sign.
The Hotel Albatros, where we stay tonight. Because our rooms won't be ready until the afternoon, we've all dropped our luggage into store and are now left to our own devices for a few hours.
The hotel is provided by Quark as part of the package, but it's just bed and breakfast, there is no further programme of events. It's pretty much a mirror of the arrangements in Punta Arenas on the way out.
It's mild weather, so we'll just take a walk around town, find some lunch, and by then perhaps we can check in.
Hmm...
The Falklands War was in 1982, so basically ancient history to anyone in Britain much younger than Amanda or me, but while (I think!) we're all friends again, it certainly doesn't seem to have been forgotten here.
This one's even less subtle!
Even in Britain at the time, the sinking of the Belgrano was controversial. Ushuaia was its base.
Read Wikipedia's Falklands War article if you want to learn/refresh your memory of those events.
The naval base here is still active, though it seems pretty low-key now. A sign says that this is a training vessel.
A sculpture in front of the main base building.
Who ‘owns’ the Antarctic regions has been subjected to a wonderful diplomatic fudge. Several nations have various territorial claims, some of which overlap, mostly unrecognised by the rest of the world. The international Antarctic Treaty of 1961 basically says that all of Antarctica is demilitarised and open for scientific research without prejudice to the legitimacy of those claims, so in practice the whole question of national sovereignty is quietly glossed over and everyone is happy.
There's a bit of a story to this wreck just off the waterfront.
It was built in the US in 1943 but transferred to the Royal Navy in 1944 for service in WWII. In 1947, after being returned to the US, it was sold for commercial use to an Argentinian company. In 1957, after suffering engine damage, it was beached and abandoned here in Ushuaia and has been slowly decaying since. Although there's a causeway leading out to it, the sign says that passage is strictly forbidden.
Looking back inland, yellow seems to be a favourite colour in Ushuaia. I wonder if our friend Matthew should perhaps ponder a move!
On the edge of town, there's a small private airstrip (once the main city airport, but no more), with this slightly sad-looking DC-3 on display. A display board tells us its history. This was the last DC-3 to be flown by the Argentinian navy, landing for the last time on July 28, 1979. In 1989, it was going to be placed in a museum of naval aviation in the city of Bahía Blanca, over a thousand miles north, but the locals got together and created a committee to guarantee that Ushaia would be its final resting place.
It doesn't look like it's had a lot of love in the subsequent three and a half decades.
When we visited Southern Chile in 2022/23, we were slightly surprised to find it to be the Land of the Lupin. This was our ignorance, of course, nothing more. We are now completely unfazed by the lupin forest adjacent to the airfield.
Suddenly these two birds fly past, very exotic looking. Thanks to Google, I can tell you that they are Buff-necked Ibises (Theristicus caudatus), and not really exotic at all if you aren't from Surrey. “A familiar and conspicuous bird of open grassland habitats in northern and eastern South America” says one web page.
They land a short distance away, and their colours are much clearer in this photo.
We're heading back into town now, starting to think about lunch.
As well as being one of the main gateways to Antarctica, Ushuaia is also a centre for visiting a lot of national parks in the Tierra del Fuego region.
I can't tell you anything about this hotel other than that it looks a very attractive building. Ushuaia is quite a random mix of architectural styles.
And here's a little place where we have a coffee and I get accosted by a strange man. He's very interested in the fact that we've just come back from our cruise, and we have quite a chat. I tell him that I will be writing my blog in due course, but I'll put some pictures up on Facebook in the next few days, so now we're Facebook friends! Hi Naren! It's finally here 😀
He also reckons that we've chosen the best coffee shop in town, and while we are in no position to verify this, we can certainly say that they provide us with a very fine bit of kaffee und kuchen.
(Amanda, of course, is thinking, “Why is it always Steve?!”)
It is distinctly unclear if the bar “Viejo Lobo” is remembering a former life as a prison!
“The Headless Man and the Penguins” - HP Lovecraft meets Ernest Hemingway?! Another mystery I have no answer to.
Amanda would like a little penguin as a souvenir, ideally a chinstrap, but we can't find anything that isn't a bit tacky; and indeed, nobody seems to do a chinstrap at all, tacky or otherwise.
Ah well, time for lunch. Another spot chosen more or less at random.
And a very fine lunch it is too. Another definite recommendation from us.
Right, back to the hotel now: our room should be ready, we think.
Not very exciting, but we can manage without excitement for a night.
We look down onto quite a busy street. With any luck, the traffic will die down at night, otherwise it could be a bit noisy.
I mean, we've been around the world and seen many things, but we've never seen anyone wearing a ski boat!
For dinner, we just go to the hotel restaurant because it's easy. The starters are good, particularly Amanda's calamari (or ‘rabas a la Romana’ in Spanish), but then it goes downhill a bit: it's ok, but not really a patch on elevenses or lunch. The portions are absolutely huge, but we'd prefer quality to quantity. If we were staying any more nights, we'd not go there again.
We have a final early evening walk and there are still interesting things to see. Ex-London buses?
Ocean Explorer has already left, bound for South Georgia.
The sightseeing road train continues the theme of prisoners and guards we saw earlier. Turns out it's an important part of the town's history and there's even a museum dedicated to the prison with a very informative website. Now you could go to the English version, museomaritimo.com/en/museum-of-the-prison-of-ushuaia, but I actually recommend you go to the Spanish-language site and use Google Translate!
And we finish the evening not drinking any of the excellent range of Patagonia beers, but having at least seen the building.
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