More Ushuaia...

Our first full day in Ushuaia we go up and enjoyed a nice breakfast in our hotel before heading over to the old prison museum for a quick tour.  Ushuaia was initially set up as a penal colony and a way for Argentina to stake a land claim to the base of the continent.

A section of the refurbished prison

The old section of the prison - without any updates it was freezing inside...

Bathrooms in the prison

After the prison and a quick lunch we went over to a travel agency and booked a tour of Tierra del Fuego and El Tren del Fin del Mundo for the next morning.  We then wandered over to the office for Areolineas Argentinas to ask about our luggage that was supposed to have arrived twice earlier and still was nowhere to be found.

There was some of that standard bureaucratic stonewalling and desire not to work from the guy at the agency in town but eventually we did get him to admit that our luggage was still in Buenos Aires but that it was going to be on the next flight and delivered to our hotel that evening.

With the assurance that our missing bag was on its way we were able to relax and didn't have to head over to the outdoor stores to buy new sets of the snow pants and long underwear that were packed in the that one bag.  We wandered the town some more and enjoyed some of the small little bars that are in Ushuaia.

 

That evening we had a nice dinner where we met up with Sharon from Polar Cruises, whom we had booked our trip with and two other people that would be traveling on the  cruise with us that had also booked through Polar Cruises.  Enjoyable dinner at Kaupe but we were again disappointed when we returned to the hotel to find that there was no luggage there waiting for us...

The next morning we were up first thing so that we could meet the bus down in front of the Rumbo Sur agency where we had booked our tour.  A short ride out of Ushuaia that was accompanied by an informative speaker and we are at El Tren del Fin del Mundo.  A rebuilding of the old train that used to take convicts out to the forests so that they could bring lumber back into Ushuaia to build the town.

 

 

 

The train winds up through the park and then at the end we are back on the bus to drive down to where the highway ends.

 

Km 3079 - the end of Route #3 in Argentina

Here we are - bottom of South America

 It was a great trip that got us back into Ushuaia just after 14:00.  We were set to board the ship anytime after 16:00, so instead of stopping for a needed lunch we quickly ran back up to our hotel to check if our luggage had finally found its way do to meet us.  If not we would have had a short window of time to run around and purchase some last minute clothes for the trip, but this time we were finally able to relax and breathe a sigh of relief as our missing bag was there waiting for us.

We wandered happily into town, grabbed a quick lunch, and then stopped by a local wine shop to buy a few bottles of wine to enjoy on the trip and a bottle of champagne that we planned to pop open after our first day at the Emperor Penguin rookery.  

Just before boarding - we are on our way...

Shortly after four we were boarding the ship and settling into our cabin.  We had a meeting with the captain and our life jacket drill before we headed to dinner and then retired to the bar to meet some of the other passengers that would be on this voyage with us....

Day 1 - Ushuaia

It's been a rough few weeks since we've been back from Antarctica, just filled with a lot of work and errands and everything but we are hoping that it will all slow down soon and we will have the time to update here on a more regular basis...

And with that said, lets start talking about our Antarctica trip and that first travel day which got us down to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world.  The travel started out great in that we received notification that we had been upgraded on the first segment of our trip, Chicago to Dallas, so all was great.

The second leg was down to Buenos Aires, and although we weren't upgraded we did enjoy exit row seating and managed to sleep like babies on the overnight flight.  We landed in Buenos Aires and after the lengthy wait to get through customs we grabbed our luggage and hopped into a taxi to transfer from the international to the domestic airport.

Two days before we had flown down the Argentinians had a strike with their airlines, and when we walked into the smaller airport and saw the lines we realized that they were still struggling to get rid of the backlog.  As we stood in line they would call people up out of line based on their final destinations, we were fine since we had a late evening flight and had about 6 hours that we could wait in the airport, so there was less stress then you could see on some of the other people that looked like they were 15 minutes from missing their flights...

At one point we were called up to a counter for flights to Ushuaia, and when we get up there she looked up our information and said something like "Ah, that flight is somewhat full can you maybe change to another flight?"  You could see this look of disappointment cross our faces, we had time to be delayed a day and still make the cruise, but we really wanted to have a full day in Ushuaia to get out and do some touring, but before we could mutter a response the agent followed up with, "We have a 12:30 flight that is slightly delayed and we can put you on that earlier flight..."

Final Leg - Flight to Ushuaia

So that was it, we were on an earlier flight and would even have a few hours to walk around the town that first night - so far everything on this trip was coming together better then could be expected.

A short flight later and we are landed and excitedly awaiting our luggage and watching what equipment our fellow travelers have brought with them.  A whole French group of downhill skiers, a big group a backpacking kids, people with the bags we were trying to find before the trip.  After coming up to near an hour of waiting the 10-15 of us still waiting on a bag or two realize that there aren't anymore bags coming through.  Another 15-20 minutes of dealing with agents and we are told that with the earlier flight several bags didn't make the plane and they would all come done on the later flight that we had originally been scheduled on.

Okay, no problems, our last bag will come in later that evening and we've a few extra hours of time to see the city, off we go to enjoy... 

View from our hotel - Valle Frio

Our hotel was a great little place, Valle Frio, and the manager took our information and told us he would contact the airport for us and make sure that our luggage would be waiting for us when we returned that evening.

 

We ended the evening like you should anywhere in the world, with a few drinks at a nice Irish pub.  Tomorrow we get to tour the city and see about booking a trip to Tierra del Fuego...