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| View from hotel looking over the bay, Ushuaia. |
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| Lamps outside the hotel. |
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| The road leading back into town. |
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| Wandering around outside the hotel. |
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| What I had assumed was the frame of an old sledge near the hotel, but now I come to write it down I find myself uncertain. But what else could it be? |
Ushuaia was the official buffer for the cruise. We arrived in the afternoon at a tiny airport which appeared to be made of wood. This isn't too say that it was a mere shed by an airstrip. It was impressive timber-framed structure that gave me an immediate sense of being somewhere quite different. While Buenos Aires had a European familiarity to it, the closest comparison I could immediately make was Alpine.
My luggage was less immediate, arriving on the carousel after everyone else's. We had been speeded through Jorge Newbery Airport by our Buenos Aires handler with great efficiency and consequently I expect my luggage had been one of the first on the plane. That didn't explain why my sister got hers in a timely fashion though, and little did I know that it was foreshadowing some drama that would come much later.
The flight had been the true start of the adventure. Before we had been tourists in Argentina. Now we were being drawn into something else. Many of our fellow passengers would most likely also be going to Antarctica. It's the main business of Ushuaia. Would we be able to spot them? We didn't have to look very hard. Seated on our row was a woman who was very enthusiastic about returning to the continent, having been there many times. She wasn't super-rich, but one of the crew for Hurtigruten, a rather more upmarket cruise operator than the one we were travelling with. Her ship was an ice-breaker and its party-piece is smashing through the sea-ice then letting passengers onto the ice where they sip champagne. Our ship was only ice-rated, of which more later.
She said she had made a rule for herself. If going to Antarctica ever felt anything less than an extraordinary privilege, she would stop going. Put in those terms it's hard to imagine her ever stopping while physically able because - spoiler - I would go back in a heartbeat if I could. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
From the airport we were herded on coaches which wound their way up through the town and into the hills which did nothing to dispel the Alpine sentiment. The town itself reminded me of Reykjavik. There was a similar functional yet colourful aesthetic to its houses.
Our hotel was perched on a mountainside overlooking the town and its bay. That evening we would be properly inducted into the cruise and there would be an opportunity to mingle with other passengers. This proved to be a strange affair that reminded me of the first day at a new school, where you sort of end up being friends with the first people you meet. It's an odd dynamic, the fortnight's duration of the cruise not being enough to move beyond that initial connection. Happily the first people we met were good company. The expedition was off to a great start.
We didn't have a great deal of time in Ushuaia, which in retrospect is a shame. Although the town itself is fairly small, it is situated an extraordinarily beautiful area. Others on the cruise had been wise to this and arrived a couple of days earlier, giving them time to hike around the nearby Martial Glacier. There are many parts of this trip when I would have like to have more time, but really what I would like is more money so I can return without it being a marathon.
In the morning Intrepid collected our luggage and took it to the ship, leaving us free to walk into town, which was a delightful experience. Some of the later photos shown here are from the start of that journey, but most are from the previous evening at the hotel. There will be more suburban views in the next post, which also includes the start of an animal train.
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