Hotel Albratros Ushuaia

... and arrived in BA on Friday morning. You already know what happened the rest of that day...<br><br>Today we woke up, had a lovely breakfast in the Hilton Executive lounge (thank you diamond membership!) and went to the airport for our one day later than planned trip to Ushuaia. The flight went as planned, thank God, although it was FULL of kids. Seriously, at least half the passengers were kids, and it seemed like they all knew each other. I think it was a field trip or something. Anyway ...

... most certainly are not to scale. A beautiful park however that is most certainly worth a visit. I think we probably walked about 12 miles that day, taking in several of the trails including the coastal trail which was lovely. The next day we hopped on our bus to El Calafate, knowing that it was going to be quite an unpleasant jouirney - we just didn´t know how unpleasant. Because of the way the road is laid out it is necessary to cross over the border ...

... crowded with them. The seals tend to honk a lot, so seeing them so animated is quite amusing. The next islet was a small (disused) lighthouse, known to have been an inspiration for the novel Moby Dick. Finally we came to the islet of Magellanic penguins - which are a delight to watch as they hoddle along, and dip into the beach water. As we might expect from the Galapagos, these creatures have no fear of us humans, so our catamaran literally shored ...

... night... and a rough night it was! Heather and I lay in our bunks, tucking ankles down the side of the mattresses and elbows against the wall as security, as the ship rolled from side, increasing in incline all the time. I looked through the porthole and in the light from the front of the vessel I could make out the furious white heads of the raging waves as they crashed against us and then ...

... on 1 March and moved us to 2 March ... no explanation. The desk agent at Buenos Aires was unable to do anything to help with that, but he could check our baggage all the way to SFO on our original flight. We'll have to deal with the flight when we get to Dulles tomorrow.<br><br>Paid our departure tax, then got in the long, long, long security line. It moved fast but was chaotic ad long. Did I mention it was long?<br><br>Once through immigration, we went to the Red Carpet Club to ...

The last 10 days cruising from BA to the falklands, around Antarctica to the southern most tip of S.America has been a great time for relaxing and re-energising after many months of being constantly on the move, taking in more stunning scenery without the need to plan our next long haul journey. The majority of time has been spent watching videos (we counted 34 films!) in our stateroom (AKA ...

... all of us since it was the first time we had seen penguins in the wild - it smelled better than expected but was quite loud (see the video) On our way back we saw the famous flag trees (shaped like this because of the extreme winds), one of the national symbols of Ushuaia and glared over to chile (over the beagle channel) that was still close to a war zone not so long ago ...

... of them, Tommorrow we are taking a tour of del fuegp national park, in the park are of course lots of beaveres, foxes and birdlife. We are staying at a european style hotel. there are bidet in the bathroom , anybody been to Europe will know what they are., great europen breakfast included , cheese meats , pastries and cold cereal. I love Europenan style breakfasts. We only met two Americns ...

... to make the hundred meters across, zigzagging back and forth trying to avoid the mud and guck. We finally reached the rock and started our ascent. Just then the wind restarted. It was in our backs so it helped going up the sometimes steep path. We got to the top of the ridge, as rain started coming down with the wind. We saw pretty god view, which must have been much better on a clearer day. Lakes and mountains across the desolate plains ...

... just bring some sea sickness medicine" they said. So along with all the cold weather clothing I have packed I stopped into a pharmacy today to get just that. This will be it for a while as I'll be out of reach, so check back in about 10 days for loads of pictures of icebergs, glaciers, penguins, sea lions, and some whales amongst other things.