After a frantic morning (until check out time) of updating blogs, we headed into town. We needed to drop of our luggage for our next sea voyage. We gave them our luggage and our passports. I should get a Chile stamp in there now. It will go with the penguin and ship elephant stamps we got by going to Antarctica.
We decide to go for a walk in the Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego, but had to time it so we could board the ship in late afternoon. We did the Pampa Alta trail, which starts near the sea, heads up over a saddle and finished at a ‘waterfall’, Cascado Rio Pipo. When we arrived at our starting point, there were loads of big tourist coaches which made us cringe. Fortunately they were all doing the popular walk along the coast. We headed off in the other direction and upwards. It was lovely to be by ourselves and also good to be walking and exercising. After about 1.5 hours we got the high point which was a saddle and had awesome views back towards the mountains and over the Beagle Channel and islands. Also there was lots of greenery.
After the walk we headed back into town and though it would be a good idea to buy a couple of beers, a packet of chips and sit by the water/docks areas. Unfortunately it started to rain so we found a bit of shelter, aka a bar that sold beer.
Walking through ‘immigration’, ‘customs’ or ‘border control’ is interesting on the docks. All we had to do was look like tourist, stumble over our English and Spanish, then walk around (not through) all the metal detector. Up the gangway and we are on the boat. Our luggage survived the trip and was in our cabin all intact.
Let me tell you about the cabin and the ship. It is different to the Akademik Ioffe, mainly due to the fact that this boat will not be heading across the Drake Passage, nor deal with big seas. The windows are all really big, there is plush carpet everywhere and the chairs in the lounge, bar and dining room are not tethered to the floor. Our twin cabin is large with a private bathroom and wide single beds.
We did a walk around the ship. There is a Yamana Lounge, which had lots of big comfy couches and you can get coffee and tea 24/7. Then there is the Sky Lounge, which is the bar and all drinks are free, including spirits and cocktails. The other major room in the Patagonia Dining Room which has about 16 tables of 10 each, thus the boat holds around 160 passengers. We couldn’t remember how big the ship was and we feared that it was going to be one of the big horror liners with 1000 passengers.
The trip out of Ushuaia was interesting. It appeared we headed out to the nearest island and then went in circles. There was always a view of Ushuaia.
There was a welcome session with champagne and wine. With dinner with some Santa Julia wine, this is the stuff we really liked in Buenos Aires. You are assigned a table, so you will eat with the same people three times a day. Our table had a US couple with their small kid and two german couples. Everyone is quite nice.
We have anchored quite close to Ushuaia, as we can still see it. The captain appears to have set the boat in a slow spin one way and then back the other way so we appear to get a changing view out the window.
No comments:
Post a Comment