South to Antarctica!!!!

The time has finally come! This is our last post before we depart for Antarctica in 3 hours!!!!! Getting very excited now. Our ship, the little 2,000 tonne Ocean Nova is dockside now, dwarfed by the 80,000 tonne Norwegian Sun, and awaiting us later this afternoon. The weather forecast is about as good as it gets down here – only a 3m-4m swell and 20kts of breeze (for comparison there is a storm forecast for later in the week which will bring +50kts of wind and +12m seas). Fortunately we will already be down there before that arrives and should miss it.

Ushuaia is, if you believe every tourist t-shirt, hat and penguin gravy jug, the end of the world, or Fin del Mundo. It is true I guess, as you can´t get much further south without a boat. It is a pretty nice town, along the shore of the Beagle Channel and surrounded by snowy mountains.

The last 10 days in Ushuaia have been pretty relaxed. We arrived here on 30 December and got tickets to a New Years party, which didn’t start until 10.30pm – I’ll never get used to Argentine hours! Was a pretty late dinner. We sat down at a random table where there were a couple of free seats, only to find that the other people at the table were from Nightcliff, in Darwin! Crazy. They were travelling with another couple from Adelaide and had flown their motor bikes over from Australia and are riding from Ushuaia to Alaska.

Aside from lying around reading books and drinking red wine (often while watching it rain) we did summon up the energy for a few days of activity on some of the sunny days. We walked out of town up to the Martial Glacier. I didn’t actually notice a glacier up there (although apparently there is a small one somewhere) but the view back over town and the Beagle Channel was certainly worth the walk. Following that we headed off to the Tierra del Fuego National Park for a day of hiking, which was also very pleasant. Nice views across the channel and to the mountains beyond. After another few days inactivity we were feeling sufficiently guilty enough that we hired some mountain bikes for a day and went for a ride out to the east of town. The road ended about 15km out and changed to a rough track. It was probably ride-able if you were really keen, but Nicole went 5m, hit a rock and fell off so we decided it was a better idea to walk (last thing we wanted was a broken wrist or something so close to our Antarctic departure). As a final parting activity we took a kayak and 4x4 tour around some of the local lakes. As usual the scenery was fantastic and kayaks are certainly a great way to see it. Unfortunately for me I didn’t go to well in the back seat of our double kayak as I must have been compressing a nerve somehow and quickly lost all use of, and feeling in, my right foot and leg. That made steering, done with foot pedals, interesting and I was quite happy to get out at the end. Anyway, alls well that ends well and I can walk again now!

We had a nice night last night in a swanky hotel (included in the price of our Antarctic tour) which made a pleasant change from backpacker hostels. We even had bacon and eggs for breakfast – I was very excited as all you normally get here is a piece of toast and a coffee. Not sure why Argentinos don’t go much on breakfast, but pretty much everywhere no one seems to bother with it (maybe as they don’t eat dinner until near midnight they aren’t hungry yet by breakfast time!?).

Well, speaking of food it’s now time for lunch then off to the boat. We´ll be back here on 23rd January, fly to Buenos Aires on the 24th then to Adelaide via Sydney on the 25th, but arriving on the 26th. Very appropriate that we should arrive back in Oz on Australia day although we won’t quite make it back for the obligatory 4x4 trip to Landrover Springs this year. We will finally arrive back in Darwin on 30 Jan and then back to the real world once more…..