Day 272: Antarctic Cruise Day 8 – Ushuaia
Our day started pretty early…actually, let me start that again: *Igor’s* day started pretty early today when the captain made a 6:30AM announcement that we would be doing some scenic cruising through “Glacier Alley”. He immediately jumped out of bed, grabbed the camera, and sprinted up to the 10th floor Observation Bar and snapped pictures of the many glaciers that spill into the Beagle Channel. Lindsay was pretty content with the glacier we saw the other day, so she slept in while he documented the wonders of nature.
Sailing into the Beagle Channel – a narrow straight that cuts through the Tierra del Fuego Archipelago
Sailing by a half-dozen glaciers in the appropriately named Glacier Alley
Big blue glaciers tumble toward the shore in Glacier Alley
We arrived in Ushuaia (Argentina!) just before lunchtime. Since we only had a half-day stop, we stuffed ourselves as much as possible during breakfast so we could explore as much as possible without stopping for food.
Ushuaia’s big claim to fame is its location as the southernmost city *in South America* (although, technically, the Chilean *village* of Puerto Williams is even further down, just across the channel). As such, about 90% of all expeditions heading for Antarctica either commence from here or at least pass through as their final pit stop for supplies. The entire town is “duty-free,” so the shopping options are plentiful, and apparently the local economy is doing great! While the rest of Argentina is suffering from raging inflation and unemployment, Ushuaia has some highest wages the country, drawing thousands of Argentineans down to the “end of the world” for work.
Coming into port in Ushuaia, Argentina!
We are not the only cruise ship in town today, the Crown Princess – a 3,000-passenger behemoth bound for Buenos Aires – dwarfs our 450-person vessel as we both tie-up to the pier. Luckily, we have a 30min head start, so we are able to disembark and pass through the Argentinean customs house without fighting our way through hundreds of cruisers
During our briefing the day before and while speaking to some of the expedition team who had visited Ushuaia before, we were warned that the weather could be quite poor – it was snowing heavily when the Quest passed through a week ago during the previous cruise, and it could get so windy that Ushuaia could feel even colder than Antarctica. After our expectations had been set incredibly low, lo and behold!, we have a gloriously warm and sunny day! We took advantage of the great weather and headed out to the Martial Glacier for a hike up the mountain.
We totally luck out and have a beautiful sunny day for our hike up Cerro Martial – some of the expedition team who have visited Ushuaia several times before told us this is the first time they have ever seen the peaks of these mountains – they are usually covered in clouds and fog even in the summer
Shedding layers of clothing as we hike up the Cerro Martial
It’s getting so hot in the sun, we actually duck into a forest path so we can walk in the shade
The tiny Martial Glacier at the top of the mountain is kinda cool, but the real prize is the stunning panorama of Ushuaia. We can even see our ship (and the monster beside it)!
We reach the top of the hiking trail just in the nick of time – clouds are starting to roll in and we feel an icy sprinkle of rain
Igor can’t resist touching the snow before we head down
All this hiking is making Lindsay hungry…good thing she snuck a few Christmas cookies in her pocket before getting off the ship! Thankfully, this isn’t Chile, so the regulations on foreign food aren’t as strict anymore
Once we got back into town, we headed over to the tourist information center to find out if we had enough time to catch the uber-touristy “Train to the End of the World,” located inside the Tierra del Fuego National Park. The ship had offered an excursion to the train and had warned that because there were two cruise ships in town, there was a high likelihood that all the trains would be chartered and sold out. Luckily for us, the park decided to run extra trains today for that very reason, so we hailed a taxi to the station.
The ticket office had room left on the 3:40PM train, which would get us back to the station at 5:15PM if we took a roundtrip ticket. Lindsay started to freakout that that was too close to our 6:00PM All Aboard time – after all, if we missed the boat here, we were royally fucked as there would be no way to catch it before it heade to Antarctica! The ticket agency made a suggestion: we could buy a one way ticket, and arrange for a taxi to meet us inside the park – turns out, the train moves at a ridiculously slow speed, and a taxi back from the park would take half the time the train would, getting us back to port safely at 4:45PM.
Playing the tourist at Ushuaia’s “Train at the End of the World”
Since the train goes into the Tierra del Fuego National Park, we have to pay the hefty admission fee in addition to the train ticket
All Aboard our steam engine locomotive! This thing is *ancient* – originally built by prisoners in the late 1880s when Ushuaia became a penal colony (a ploy by the Argentinean government at the time to increase the population of their southern territory), the train chugs along at about 10KMPH
The scenic train has one stop for pictures about halfway through the route. We arrive just as the Seabourn-chartered train stops, heading in the opposite direction – therefore we are surrounded by a throng of orange jackets as we wander the short hiking trail up to a teeny waterfall. When we get back on our train, Lindsay puts her face to the glass and stares down our fellow cruisers as they head back toward the boat (they probably all think we are idiots and got on the wrong train…)
The train’s slow pace allows us to soak in the beautiful landscape of the Tierra del Fuego National Park
When we reach the station inside the park, we breathe a sigh of relief when we see a lone taxi car waiting by the side of the road. Assuming it’s ours, we start to open the back doors, when the driver starts to tell us in Spanish that he is waiting for another fare – he was meeting a group of three. OK, hopefully our taxi would be along any minute, right? Lindsay started freaking out again – there is no cell reception inside the park and if we let the train leave before our taxi arrived, we would have no way of getting back to town.
10min later, our taxi still hadn’t arrived…but the taxi’s missing fare hadn’t either. Clearly they weren’t on the same train we were, so we convinced the driver to take us instead – same money, right? He agreed and told us to go ahead and get in. About halfway back to town Lindsay overheard the taxi dispatcher call him on the radio, saying his original fare was looking for him. Tough shit, guys – you should have been at the station when you said you would be! Maybe they can take our wayward taxi.
Sailing away from South America – next stop, ANTARCTICA!