BEAGLE CHANNEL, ARGENTINIAN/CHILEAN BORDER – Greetings from on-board the M/S Expedition! We have been on the ship for a number of hours now, but let me go back to yesterday coming into Ushuaia.
After I posted the last blog entry from Buenos Aires, we hopped a cab over to AEP, the domestic airport in Buenos Aires. The airport was quite small – maybe 10-15 gates or so in total. Also, both check-in and security were quite lax. Check-in took about 5 minutes, and we got some good news. It says very specifically both on our ticket and on Aerolineas Argentinas’ website that for any bags over approximately 25 pounds (yes, 25 pounds), there is a surcharge that amounts to approximately $30 USD. Okay, fine… I figured there was obviously no hope to keep it under that, so mentally I was prepared to pay. The only exception to the rule is if you book your international travel on their airline, and I didn’t – we flew Continental/United on our way LAX-IAH-EZE. The woman who checked us in didn’t even mention anything, didn’t even weigh our bags, and checked them through to Ushuaia. Success!
The first flight was from Buenos Aires to a little town called Rio Gallegos. It sits on an outlet to the Atlantic Ocean, right on the water, and is so far south it is surrounded by barren rock and tundra! The flight route was interesting… we were basically hugging the east coast of Argentina the entire time as we flew south-south-west. We did not cut across any moderate to large size bays, and stuck quite exclusively within Argentina. Not entirely sure what the deal was with that. Also, the flight wasn’t full, so once we took off there was room to move about the cabin, which was nice. Lastly, we got served food – in coach, on a three hour flight, we actually got a snack – for free. Cheers to the good ole days of flying!
Upon landing in Rio Gallegos I instantly thought of Kugluktuk, a little town in the Canadian province of Nunavut that sits on the Arctic Ocean. Kugluktuk is further north than Rio Gallegos is south, but overall both are rather small (though Rio Gallegos is much bigger), on very cold water, in tundra, and inhabited almost exclusively by non-wealthy natives. The airport had two gates, one of which was empty. We didn’t even get off the plane, but it was still interesting to see the town.
From Rio Gallegos we took off on a short little 40 minute flight down to Tierra del Fuego and the southernmost city in the world, Ushuaia. Along semi-similar lines to the first flight, we did not take a direct course to Ushuaia. Instead, we flew out east in order to very specifically avoid Chilean airspace, and only once clear did we veer south to our destination. On such a short flight it isn’t like it really matters, but nonetheless I found it interesting that we would intentionally go out of our way, and I am curious as to why we did so.
Landing in Ushuaia was one of the most incredible sights I have ever seen. As we descended, we passed a couple of snow-capped mountain ranges, and then came out over the Beagle Channel overlooking Ushuaia and all of Tierra del Fuego. We circled around and landed at USH in perfectly clear weather (quite rare), surrounded by the infinite beauty of endless mountains and water, completely untouched by man. Love having a window seat for sights like these!
Ushuaia itself was a nice little city. It was definitely bigger than I expected, and had a nice little downtown and port area. Once getting settled at the hotel, I went for a run – did a 5K throughout town… I ran down the hill from the hotel to the water, then along perpendicular to the port along the waterfront. It is an aesthetically gorgeous city, and it instantly reminded me of a split between the aesthetics surrounding Seward, Alaska, with the infrastructure and prominence of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada.
After the run, we had our initial G Adventures group meeting in our hotel lobby, and got to meeting a number of our fellow travelers who were on our ship to Antarctica! Sitting in the lobby was very much reminiscent of sitting in the lodge at Great Slave Lake and Great Bear Lake – looking out at the sun over a beautiful setting, and realizing “oh, wait, it’s 10pm and the sun is still up.” It is the type of thing you need to see for yourself to understand. From the reception we headed to dinner, and went with a New Zealander, Irishman, Canadian, and two Americans – one from Atlanta and another Seattle. Had a good last dinner on terra firma at an Irish Pub, and got to sleep a bit late.
This morning has been the most exciting day yet, as we boarded the ship!
Prior to boarding, however, we set out on an excursion to Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego (Tierra del Fuego National Park). Interestingly enough, I had heard of this national park long before I ever imagined traveling to Antarctica. It sits just 11km down the road from Ushuaia, and is a large cross-section of preserved wilderness from sea level up to several mountain summits in Tierra del Fuego. Tierra del Fuego, by the way, is the “frozen land,” but it is the name of a specific province (the southernmost) in Argentina. That said, it is used within the region almost interchangeably with Patagonia, which describes the southern mountains at the end of the Andes range both in Argentina and Chile. Both are “correct,” and describe where I was.
The National Park was worth visiting – it is indeed beautiful – but I found it rather underwhelming. As a whole it was quite pretty, but honestly nothing I had never seen before. The mountains and water surrounding the city were equally if not more impressive.
From there we grabbed some lunch and did some final shopping in Ushuaia before coming to the port, where we boarded buses that drove us onto the dock past security. Once there we boarded the ship! It looked pretty impressive from afar. As someone who has never been on a cruise before, it looked huge to me, although I am fully aware that we are on a tiny, tiny, tiny ship by those standards. In total we have about 120 passengers on board, and within a few minutes we were checked-in. I am in cabin 319, and I met my roommate David, who is a photography instructor from North Carolina. He is an excellent photographer and uses Nikon’s too, and has been helpful in teaching me a few tricks.
After finding our rooms and putting in our luggage, we got our ID cards and photos taken, and then had an introductory meeting where we met some of the staff and expedition leaders. Susan is our chief expedition leader, and is the one who makes most of the important decisions as far as what we will be doing on a daily basis and at any given moment. Our captain, by contrast, makes the important decisions for the actual ship itself – speed, heading, maneuverability all changeable based on weather and ice.
From there we had our emergency drill – we got our life jackets, found our appropriate routes to our exits on the ship, and then found our emergency life boats. We actually got to go inside them and while basic, I was impressed. They are essentially sealed tight and semi-submersible. If something ever did go wrong, I have full confidence we would be perfectly safe and found from those things. They also have plenty of food and water on board to last quite some time, if necessary.
That was about it! Once our briefing and our drill were complete, we prepared for departure, and headed up to the deck. I made a couple of final phone calls and sent a few last emails from my phone, uploaded some pictures of us heading out, and we were off!
Within five minutes we were in the middle of the Beagle Channel and heading east towards the Atlantic Ocean. The waters were calm and the weather was phenomenal – 50s and sunshine reflecting off the water and ice-capped mountains. Winds were pretty calm too, and the waves were practically nonexistent.
Dinner was impressive and left me with high expectations for the rest of the trip. I had a spaghetti pesto dish with a caprese salad and some fresh fruit for dessert. Wonderful!
We wrapped up dinner around 9:30pm, and headed up to the deck with the sun on our faces. I decided to track our GPS coordinates and sunlight times throughout the trip. From the Beagle Channel, our sunset was at 9:57pm. That said, it was light out for awhile afterwards, and around 11:30pm one of the most incredible things happened. To our southwest was ambient light from the sunset, still hugging the horizon. To our due north, a full moon was rising. To our southeast, get this, ambient light was appearing from the sun rising. From the middle of this, on board our ship, we were looking out at three opposing points of light. On planet earth that is nearly impossible, and is something I have never seen before, even having seen the midnight sun and having been well within the Arctic Circle. As this was happening, we were coming around la Isla Nueva, the “New Island,” but really it is the easternmost and thus “last” island before crossing into the extreme South Atlantic Ocean. As we did, the waves really picked up quite a bit, and it is now time to get some sleep! Can’t wait to get into the Drake tomorrow!
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