Sunrise in the harbour as we prepare to leave the ship.
Ushuaia from the ship with the Andes backdrop.
Leaving by the gangway and boarding our transit bus into town.
The G Expedition team are all in blue.
Our first hotel in town.
The halls of the prison which now house the local museum.
John down in the lower floor.
Tuesday, November 12th.
We were up before Jonathan’s good
morning announcement, finished packing and headed for breakfast. Lots of sad goodbyes
and then people began leaving on the three shuttles. We had to bid a very sad
farewell to Bruce who has been a better roommate than we could have hoped for. Ever
the king of one-liners, at breakfast he said he ‘endured’ the trip. But we
reckon he gave as good as he got!
John and I are on the last shuttle
as we are staying here in Ushuaia for a few days. Two other big ships docked
this morning at the pier. It is interesting that on our whole voyage we never
saw another ship. These are the first two.
We disembarked, said goodbye to the
GAdventure staff and were shuttled by bus for the short ride into town. They
dropped us at the hotel they sanction and John and I walked the short distance
to our hotel that I had booked because theirs was full, the Austral Ushuaia. We
left our luggage as it was too early to check in and went for a wander around
this small town. It is surrounded by snow covered mountains and feels a little
like a Swiss alpine village. These are the southern end of the Andes Mountains
that run the whole length of the continent. Eventually we stumbled upon the
hotel we will check into for our tour in a couple of days and found a little
café called the Mercado. We stayed there for a bit having a coffee while John
checked some business emails. Andrew Orr, the expedition photographer joined us
and tried to use the internet to sort out some computer issues he was having.
We walked to the tourist office to
see what we should do while here, other than what we are already booked to do.
Then we went back to the hotel checked in and went back to the Mercado where
Andrew was still wrestling with Adobe over his access to programs he needs to
do his photography on the ship. We had lunch with him and hung out for a while
before heading out to visit the huge local museum. It is housed inside an old
prison behind the naval base. Ushuaia was founded as a penal colony in the late
1800’s. The museum is housed in the original prison building and has six large
wings off a central courtyard. Inside we could see the prisoner’s cells and the
conditions they endured. There was also an Antarctic museum, an Ushuaia history
museum, an art gallery and a small natural history museum. We spent a couple of
hours wandering around before walking back to the hotel again. John caught up
with some work issues and I updated some blog stuff.
At 7:30 we headed out to a locally
famous restaurant, the Vulver. It was very bohemian inside with lots of
antiques and curios all around that related to this area. There were several
pictures of ‘Che’ Guevara the Argentine Marxist revolutionary who was involved
in the Cuban revolution with Fidel Castro. We both had an excellent meal of a
large piece of seabass and some pieces of king crab and a bottle of red wine.
On the way back we stopped for an ice cream before heading back for the night.
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