Friday, February 23, 2018- Cruise Day 31; Ushuaia- End of the World

Friday, February 23, 2018- Cruise Day 31; Ushuaia- End of the World

The days are growing very long as we reach the extremes of latitude.  The sunrise is at 6:43AM and sunset is at 8:50PM.  It did stay light last night well past our circumnavigation of Cape Horn.  When we first got up and looked out the window just as the sun was rising, we thought we were at port because we could see mountains that looked stationary, but the ship was still rocking.  It turns out the water was smooth as glass and we were moving slowly through the Beagle Channel.  There are some incredibly jaggedy topped crags sticking up above other smoother mountains and glacial moraines.  We could see all the way from sea level up to permanent ice packs and glaciers.  In some ways, there are elements of Alaska, New Zealand and Norway, but it’s all unique.  We had breakfast and readied ourselves for our half day excursion called “A Drive to the End of the World”.  

We docked next to a Norwegian Flagged ship, the Hurtigruten, that appears to specialize in Antarctica cruises.  Our ship dwarfed it, and it looked like it held fewer than 300 passengers.  There were no balcony cabins, and no visible swimming pool- just two small hot tubs on the top deck.  I couldn’t see where they could store a few zodiacs to ferry people to shore in, but presume they must have a hanger for them, or perhaps there is a specialized dock on the far side of the ship we couldn’t see.  There was another even smaller ship ahead of the Hurtigruten called the Fram that was a fraction of the size of the Hurtigruten, but had 6 zodiacs visible on the top of the aft deck with a pair of winches for lowering them to the water more than 35 feet below.  

We boarded our tour buses on the wharf in an efficient and well organized manner.  Ushuaia is a small city of 57,000 people, but it is spread out on the apron of the surrounding mountains with glaciers and ice fields looming thousands of feet above and behind the businesses and homes.  It as interesting to drive through the town and then head out into the countryside.  There appears to be a large variation in building styles and construction as there are lots of homes that look cobbled together in random manners.  There really isn’t any unifying architectural elements other than the extensive use of corrugated steel for roofing and paneling.  The paved roadway ends just a little way out of town and turns into a 1-1/2 lane gravel road, which is the last part of the highway that stretches from the North Slope in Alaska to Tierra del Fuego- the longest continuous road in the world. 

The countryside is very scenic with towering mountains, glacial moraines, and mixed deciduous and evergreen forests.  There was a huge cloud of dust kicked up by any vehicles driving on the gravel road, so we were glad we weren’t in an open vehicle of any sort.  As we drove in through the park, our interpreter explained how introduced species have altered the flora and fauna of Tierra del Fuego.  Beavers were introduced, but there was not enough cold weather for them to develop the kind of fur they do in northern Canada, so they ended up worthless, but multiplied by the tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands, damming  up all the streams in the glacial valleys and flooding out forests, converting them to meadows.  There were plenty of different birds including black necked swans and at least a half dozen different kinds of geese.  The most interesting bird we saw, by far, was a crested Cara Cara that ran out in front of the bus and then ran along side the road for a ways before ducking into the forest.  It was most interesting to us because this Christmas, we had seen one at the Sonora Desert Museum as part of the Raptor Flight demonstration.  This Cara Cara looked a lot healthier than the neurotic one at the Desert Museum though.  

The scenery in the Tierra del Fuego national park is unique.  It has elements of Norway, New Zealand and Alaska, with the snow capped mountains meeting the ocean, but was laid out in a more linear and open fashion.  Yet, everywhere you turned, there were snow capped mountains in the distance meeting the sky.  The vegetation was also quite unique.  The majority of the trees have tiny leaves, so the leaf litter on the ground wasn’t pine needles, but tiny leaves.  There are also a lot of trees with heart rot that have fallen in strange ways, creating the appearance of a haunted forest.  We stopped at some beautiful lakes and inlets within the park and took a few sort nature walks.  It would have been nice to have spent more time on the walks- each stop was limited to just 15-30 minutes, and it always took a long time to rustle up the last 2 or 3 missing passengers, who invariably were not English speakers, back on the bus to go to the next stop.  There is a post office on a wharf at the southernmost part of the park that claims to be the southernmost post office in the world, and people were anxious to go in there and buy stamps and postcards to send home with the Tierra del Fuego National Park postmark on them.  Someone we met said they had paid US$15 to send three stamped postcards to her friends.  We would just send an email when we found free wifi. 

The bus dropped us off near the cruise ship pier, and we then walked around the town itself, which has several free museums touting “The End of the World” theme, really meaning the southernmost city in the world.  The museums had numerous interesting artifacts, but most of the exhibits were in Spanish, with occasional English panels.  Ushuaia seems to have some late generational guilt about their treatment of the aboriginal people, as expressed in numerous murals round the city.  A Missionary was successful in preserving their language through a dictionary that he created, but the aboriginals are apparently down to just a single individual who can speak the language, and who is very, very old.  It appears that language is close to extinction, as is that race of people.

We had beautiful early Seattle Summer like weather with light breezes, puffy clouds in the sky and temperatures in the upper 50’s and lower 60’s, so it was very comfortable for us, except that everyone had dressed for colder weather and the bus was not air conditioned, so it got a bit warm in the bus.  

We did find some free Wifi at the head of the dock, although the quality and reliability of the connection was nearly as bad as the ship’s expensive and terrible Wifi.  We really miss the great internet we had at the hotel at Iguazu falls.  

We made it back to the ship with time to grab lunch and join in on the 3:45PM afternoon trivia.  None of our usual team was back so we ended up playing with Fred, whom we had teamed up with a few times early in the cruise.  His wife had taken a terrible tumble on a wilderness hike in St Vincent, sliding down a 200 foot embankment.  She had to be rescued, and although she didn’t end up with any broke bones, she was pretty badly battered, and is just now feeling well enough to go on excursions.  It ended up being a pretty hard trivia, or we really missed the talents of our usual partners as we only scored 10/20.  The winners scored 13/20.  Who is the great grey poet anyways?

We had a relaxing afternoon and had dinner in the dining room.  They had a mango strudel dessert that fell flat for us.  It had a strange mealy texture and just wasn’t sweet enough or mango-ey enough.  It was really the first dessert that wasn’t up to parr, and we have had a lot of desserts.  

We had most of our team back, except for Bob, in the evening for the 7:45PM Musicals Trivia, which Roger was really looking forward to.  We invited Ted to join us.  We ended up leaning heavily on Roger, who is a musicals savant, but did come up with quite a few ones we knew as well.  However, sometimes its hard to come up with the exact title to some of the songs, and there are some really obscure musicals out there as well.  There was even one that Roger had never heard of- The Color Purple.  We ended up in a 3 way tie for second place while the winning team had managed one point over our score.  

Tomorrow is another at sea day as we clear the Beagle Chanel and head up the Strait of Magellan towards Punta Arenas.