Up at 6:00.
Light grab-and-go breakfast at 6:30.
Left the ship at 7:00.

Since we had the morning to kill we decided to join a tour of Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego which is seven miles west of Ushuaia. We went from the ship to the park in a bus filled with fellow cruisers also killing time. The weather was on par for the area with rain, fog, wind, and rain the first half of the tour and full sun the rest. On with the gloves, hats, and coats … off with the gloves, hats, and coats.

The park is a total contrast to the white landscape in South Georgia and Antarctica; it is a lush green with zillions of beech, lenga, and coihue trees, many coated in a fuzzy green moss that thrives in this climate. It looks a lot like Spanish moss but not nearly as long. There are trails, tourist yurts, wild horses, and camping sites. The southern terminus of the Pan-American Highway is located within the park. We made two stops, one at the visitor’s center where we enjoyed a quick snack and one on the shore of the Beagle Channel where we were free to stroll along the water’s edge.

Arrived at the Ushuaia airport at 11:00.
Boarded our three-hour flight to Buenos Aires at noon.
Laid over in Buenos Aires for six hours, two of which were spent in immigration and waiting for the United counter to open. The other four were spent in the lounge where we enjoyed dinner.
Boarded our 10-hour flight to Houston at 10:00 PM. We skipped dinner but had breakfast before landing.
Arrived at 4:45 AM Houston time.
Immigration and then a second breakfast in the lounge.
Boarded our three-hour flight east at 7:30 AM. Enjoyed a third breakfast on board.
Landed at 11:30.
Got home just in time for lunch. Not! We were too full of breakfast to even consider lunch.

Talk about a trip of a lifetime! Everything from the expedition ship to the food, sights, crew, staff, sites, lectures, and activities exceeded our expectations. Dan’s favorite parts of the trip were the stop in the Falklands and the zodiac landings. I have three favorites. The first is the total silence and remoteness of South Georgia and Antarctica. With the exception of the penguin and seal rookeries, there is no noise. While on land or sea, everything moves silently including the huge whales. The second is seeing the animals and birds going about their business as if we were not there. And the third is the flat-as-a-pancake sea ice as well as the ice flows that looked like lace floating on water.

I’ll close with the captain’s farewell jokes.
How do you know Santa is good at karate?
Duh, he wears a black belt.

A man called in sick over the Christmas holiday.
His manager reprimanded him for missing work.
The man replied, “Actually I didn’t miss it at all.”

… Fun Facts …

Ushuaia is not on mainland Argentine, it’s on the island of Tierra del Fuego.
This island is split with half being owned and governed by Chile and the other half by Argentina.

Using Australia as a model, prisoners were sent to Ushuaia in 1902 as forced labor
to work in the timber and to build the city, the prison, and a railway into the forest.
The prison closed in 1947.

In 1994, 40 years after it had been closed as a prison train, the track and train were revived, modernized, and used as a heritage train running from Ushuaia to the Parque Nacional del Tierra del Fuego.
It’s casually referred to as the End of the World Train.

The 19,000 mile Pan-American Highway runs all the way from Prudhoe Bay near the Arctic Ocean
in Alaska all the way here! Well, almost all the way.
The Darien Gap between Panama and Columbia has no roads, so the intrepid traveler
has to find a workaround for that 99 mile stretch.
Anyone up for a road trip?