The Beginning of the End. . .of the World

After breakfast at the hotel on Sunday morning, we piled outside and onto the coaches (we call them “busses” in American English – I noticed that even the Americans working the ship use British English terms) and headed to the domestic airport in Buenos Aires.

The airport is right next to the La Plata River, so we got a much better view of the river there than from the city on Saturday.  We also got a good look at the skyline of Buenos Aires, with excellent views as we took off and turned over the big city.

It was a quiet flight to Ushuaia – the southern most city in the world.  I blogged a bunch – writing in WordPerfect (fight the Microsoft power!) so I could load the posts onboard the ship.

After landing, we then got on some more coaches (busses) and headed to Tierra del Fuego National Park.  The view from the airport is similar to that of the Queenstown Airport (not quite as Remarkable, but close!)   The drive to the park was incredible – it was reminiscent of Alaska – huge trees, mountains all around.

(As I write this, we are steaming past vast tabular icebergs – 100 feet high, quarter mile long – some near, some far.  Very dramatic.  We’ve been up since 4am.  Now we are hanging out in the lounge, peering out the windows at the amazing scene around us – which includes Adelie penguins swimming in the waters around us, popping out of the water every so often like mini-dolphins.)

There was one mountain peak where our guide noted the downed trees – they were more than 90 years old, and the cold weather causes them to decompose very, very slowly.  I figured she was going to say that a storm blew in last year – that’s how little they’ve changed in the 90 years.

We had some spectacular views all around, with our guide pointing out the approximate border on a mountain between Argentina and Chile.  I refrained from making a “build a wall and Chile’s going to pay for it” joke.

After some views of the small bay and back toward the Beagle Channel (it’s a body of water, not a TV station solely devoted to Beagles).  (Hey, I should start the penguin channel!), we went on board the catamaran and had lunch as we cruised around the bay off of Seal Island (no seals were seen).

Then, the catamaran hightailed it back through the Beagle Channel to Ushuaia.  The wind was whipping something fierce, and those out front (like myself) occasionally got soaked with spray to cool us off (it was plenty cold already).  I was the last one still out on the front of the catamaran as we came into the harbor, where I got some good pictures of our ship for the next ten days – the National Geographic Orion.

Everything was very well organized – our bags were already in our room, so Carol unpacked as I uploaded some blogs and caught up on email.  We had some briefings, a good dinner, and off we sailed through the Beagle Channel, headed for the sturm and drang that is the Drake Passage.