Sunday Feb 4, 2024
Hi Folks! We made it to the “end of the world” or what they call the city of Ushuaia. It’s the southern most inhabited city in the world and we got to visit it last year on our “drive by” Antarctica cruise.
Today started off extra early!Up at 4 AM, on the bus at 5 AM, on the plane at 7 AM and landed in Ushuaia at 10:30 AM. That’s a lot in one morning!
After we landed, we boarded our tour bus for Tierra Del Fuego National Park. That name stands for “Land of Fire” since when Ferdinand Magellan discovered this area he first saw the indigenous people with lots of fire sticks along the river and called it Tierra Del Fuego (Land of Fire). Saw some nice scenery and got to stop at the “end of the world” post office. Very cool!
They then dropped us off at the ship and embarkation was a breeze. It was so wild that the first person we saw on the ship was our old waiter Chris from our Arctic cruise! He said he just joined this ship 10 days ago. The other wild thing was we saw another Chris from our Arctic cruise from the expedition team. Small world!
We got unpacked and went to the briefing about our trip. We got good news and bad news. The bad news is there is a huge storm crossing the Drake passage tomorrow with 30 to 40 foot waves! The good news is we’re staying an extra night in the port of Ushuaia and not leaving until the storm leaves late tomorrow night. We would not want to cross in 40 foot waves!!
We then went to dinner with Carol and Dan and the food was just as good as we remembered last summer. After dinner, we went to the Observation Lounge to listen to this guy play clarinet and piano. Great music!
We got to bed at a decent time since we’ve had very little sleep the last few nights! Hope everyone had a great weekend!
PS: Not sure how great the wifi is so I’ll post the verbiage tonight and the pictures tomorrow!
The Wandering Italian 