HAPPY THANKSGIVING USA! The sun rises here around 4am, so I was extremely happy to have sun blocking shades in the hotel room. It did not appear that the hotel has air conditioning which caused the room to be very hot until early this morning. After cleaning ourselves up, we went downstairs to the restaurant for breakfast. The hotel offers a buffet of pastries, eggs, bacon, sausage, fried “vegetables”, and cereals. I took one of each type of food to try. The sausage reminded me of a dried smoked pepperoni, the bacon was perfect, and I did not try the scrambled eggs. I did however, get a poached egg from the kitchen; it was under-cooked so I did not eat it. I did have a croissant with dulce de leche. It was AWESOME. Very tasty, especially with bacon. Brad and I enjoyed our breakfast and coffee overlooking the bay for a while as we both woke up and drank coffee. The coffee here is 2/3 coffee and 1/3 milk; very tasty.
After breakfast we strolled downstairs where we took pictures of the view from the hotel and met with the cruise representative, Lupe. There were quite a few people waiting in line to speak with her, and we learned a bit about some of the passengers onboard the ship. One of the people ahead of us is an American considering taking a helicopter ride. I remarked that they should book the helicopter ride over Argentina, and let me go instead. If that didn’t sound appealing to them, I would also accept the champagne they were discussing. They both laughed as they walked off. I think I’m going to like these people. The next group was an older Russian gentleman and his wife. While I didn’t understand what she was saying in Russian, I did catch some of the gist of what to expect on the cruise. While the Russian passengers were getting their run down, I couldn’t help but notice an older gentleman in the lobby. He was wearing dark blue pants, suspenders, a lighter shirt, a cap, and the most incredible mustache I have ever seen. He must have seen me staring because he suddenly started walking around pillars, but his mustache reminded me of my Great Uncle Olie. It was long, bushy, and twirled up at the tips. I coaxed Brad into taking a photo of him, but it didn’t come out clear. If you couldn’t tell, I’m enjoying people watching on this trip. When it was our turn, Lupe spoke to Brad and I about the trip. She mentioned that we will have to leave our bags out before our briefing tomorrow, and gave us some luggage tags. She also offered her expertise on the area including food and entertainment. After our quick discussion, we headed into downtown.
Our first order of business for today was to stop by a bank and get some local currency. The first bank did not offer an exchange, but Banco de Tierra Del Fuego, did! The bank looked very similar to the DMV in America. We get an alpha numeric number, and wait in a lobby until our number is called. We then go behind a metal partition and speak with an agent behind bullet proof glass. He didn’t speak a lot of English, but Brad’s Spanish was good enough to ask for us to change the money. After exchanging our currency we headed off to check out the city.
After a decent amount of walking, it was 1pm and we were pretty thirsty. We found a café off on one of the main streets, but away from the tourist shops. We sat at the bar and ordered some coffee. The coffee I had ordered was perfection in a glass. It was hot chocolate, REAL CHOCOLATE, with baileys, coffee, and it hit the spot. I slowly sipped that and drank some sparkling water. Our French fries had melted cheese and ham on the dish. So French fries in Argentina are soft fried. The potatoes are soft, and usually decently hot. They cooled down over our conversation, enough to eat which only made the potatoes soggier. We enjoyed the meal and then set out in downtown for a bit of walking to off-set the cheese. Brad went looking for some swim trunks to participate in the polar plunge when we get to Antarctica. After finding a pair he liked, we discovered that they were $67 American and that was just way too much for trunks. We continued to walk around the city, finding interesting buildings and the massive mountains in the background. We stumbled across a lot of the local spots to purchase books, hostels, and street snacks. Of course those were closed. Along our journey we browsed a curio shop or two and looked for a local beverage called mate. It’s a tea served in a gourd with a metal straw typically shared with several people. After looking for a while, we found a starter kit for $10 but the packaging looked pretty old so I decided to see if there were any other options along our journey. Surprisingly, this is not sold in restaurants because of the health aspects of sharing the straw between people (according to locals). We also saw several meal options for the evening. On our way back to the shuttle we stopped off a local liqueur store to purchase a bottle of wine. We wanted to try some Patagonian wine while we were here. The idea would be to have the bottle either at the hotel or on-board ship. If you’re going to have more than two glasses, you may as well just buy the bottle. This seemed like the more economical choice. Bottle in hand, we continued on.
We browsed the streets for a while more, but everything had closed again for the siesta time until it re-opened at 7pm. We learned today that, since the sun sets so late, Argentinians don’t eat dinner until 10pm usually. They usually offer two meal services: 8pm for tourists, and 10pm for locals. This would explain why I saw so many people eating dinner on my way back from the gym last night (around 11pm). The restaurant at the hotel looked packed versus earlier in the evening when Americans would normally be eating dinner. Upon arriving back at the hotel we dropped our wine off in the hotel room and headed downstairs to the bar area. We grabbed two suede armchairs with a view of the bay and drank dos café con crema while writing our blog. For most of our outing this afternoon, the weather had been decently overcast and breezy. The weather was probably about 60 degrees outside, with a chilly wind-chill. As we departed downtown some rain clouds had just started to appear over the city. While we sipped our coffee we watched the rain clouds drift over the city, and the boats leaving the harbor. Around 6pm we saw two other ships leave port to begin their Antarctic adventure. What started as only a few people having a sip by the window, increased to full bar area with people drinking, eating, and kids playing Uno.
Brad and I packed up and headed out towards the shuttle to downtown. We decided that tonight we were both too tired and cold to spend too much time out and about for dinner. Since this was our Thanksgiving holiday back home, we chose a barbecue place to eat dinner. The restaurant fashioned itself by showing the roasting meats in the window and the tables set back further into the restaurant. Brad chose the steaks and I had some chicken with mashed potatoes and a green sauce. To my surprise, the green sauce was actually a cream sauce with green onions chopped up into the sauce. The chicken was a little over done but a significant improvement over the previous evenings chicken option. Brad and I shared a bottle of wine in celebration of our holiday and I ended the meal with some caramel smoked flan with dulce de leche. The wind had picked up on the walk back to the shuttle stop, so I was excited to keep walking. The streets of Ushuaia, Argentina are steep with ramps and steps up and down the hills to get from point A to point B. I was happy to keep moving back to the shuttle because it was helping me to keep warm. It’s finally starting to feel like we’re at the bottom of the world. We took the shuttle back to the hotel at sun down and took photos of night lights of the city with the sun down. Don’t worry, no one was in the gym at the time of my photos. After a day of walking around, it was bed time.
