Ushuaia – A Couple of Rest Days
A lovely lie in was had this morning. I then wandered around a very mild Ushuaia. It is well protected from the elements by a horseshoe of mountains. It was strange to drive through sub-zero temperatures to get here yet be greeted by 8-12 degrees relatively warm temperature in the town.
The town is much livelier than I had expected. It’s an adventure town hub for trekkers, extreme fishing, the starting points for ship excursions to Antarctica which was 2 days south of here, plus plenty of private sailors, and a handful of ‘adventure’ campers and 4 x 4 motorhomes. There are loads of restaurants and bars.
My first stop was the Irish bar where I met a chap called Donnie from New Zealand who had sailed from Auckland via Easter Island, on his planned 2-5 year trip around the world voyage. He’d been in Ushuaia for 6 weeks now. It seemed to me he’d almost got stuck in the Irish Bar I think. Perhaps crossing the Atlantic via the Falklands, Ascension and St Helena had lost its shine with all this good food and drink at hand? I have to say there did seem to be an awful lot of sailors here. There must have been 80-100 sailing boats in the harbour.
I grabbed a cab and collected Lidy from the airport who had made seven flights (Phuket – Bangkok – London – Madrid – Sao Paulo – Buenos Aires – El Calefate – Ushuaia) over 48 hours to get here from Phuket. She thought the wind was bad when she got out of the airport – boy is she in for a shock! She was clearly fed up with in-flight food so we heading out to celebrate both our arrivals into Ushuaia, and I introduced her to busy Asador – serving open-fire cooked lamb, and barbequed king crab.
The next day we spent some time sorting out some gear for Lidy. I then for some unknown reason I suggested a trek to the local glacier. I said it’d be a good walk, and would get her used to the climate, whilst testing the new gear all at the same time. It turned out to be true, she stayed warm and we were given some great views of the land and seascape.
We then had a bit of hassle rescheduling as the ferry times were changed. This meant the next day we had to cover 500 kms including two border crossings, and 160 kms of track. I had planned to do this over two days.
There were at least half a dozen large Antarctica cruise ships dock, and depart in the two days I was there. Apparently during the 3-4 months or so it is accessible to get there the boats are full with tourists paying from $10,000 to $30,000 for the privilege.
So this is what Boris does with the old buses!
Like father, like son.
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