After nearly two days without sleep, I put in nearly two nights (for me) at once! I slept about twelve hours, and work up to an 8:30 alarm. After a quick shower, breakfast was offered through the hotel and we headed down to the buffet. I loaded a small plate with cured meat, a croissant, and some roasted vegetables, and enjoyed the scenery outside. The coffee was good, and it was a nice relaxing way to wake up.
It was great to be on our own schedule for once for us both, and a leisurely breakfast turned into a leisurely walk back to the room, and eventually an even more leisurely walk downtown. We stopped by a store offering a “free gift” to travelers, and picked up a small token. I was expecting a hard-sell from the jewelry store in exchange (not my first “hey here’s a store offering something free since you’re part of our group here!” rodeo), but the sales staff was extremely helpful, gave us our gift immediately, and thanked us. We looked around a bit to be polite, and then left the store. We went on a brief trek to find me something to wear for the “polar plunge” (yep, in the Antarctic!), but the price was prohibitive to say the least (not really a captive market if I can still decide I don’t want to buy it, guys…), so that may or may not happen next week. We also wandered into a local place for lunch, and had what effectively was french fries in a thick cheese soup (but was marketed at loaded fries). It did have some great ham and some onions, so I have no complaints (it could have used some salt… but I didn’t want to be *that* guy!). From there we walked around some more, found a few local chocolate/drink shops, grabbed a bottle of wine for the boat (assuming we can get it in), and a cigar for me once we’re out on the ocean, and as we were approaching nap time again we headed back to the hotel.
This seems like a good place to take some time to describe Ushuaia, a “small”, sprawling town that is the last stop for many who are headed to Antarctica. I didn’t know before our trip… but due to where it is situated it’s actually quite a tourist town now, the gateway to Antarctica. We’ve been surrounded by many tourists who at times outnumber the locals. I wonder how the locals feel about tourists here… they’re probably glad economically and a little disappointed at the sheer numbers. That said, I have a feeling that tourism disappears when it comes to winter time, and I’ll bet the city is beautiful. The streets here are small, mostly one direction or the other throughout town and sometimes headed straight up or down hills steep enough to be part of San Francisco, or San Jose, Costa Rica. Just a few miles inland from the bay, mountains rise so high that a tree-line is visible as a clear cut-off to wildlife at altitude, and some of the city has sprung up onto the same mountainsides, causing sloping roads that look like they would be extremely scary in bad weather. Most of the hill-streets have both a slope, and steps, on each side. I imagine this is invaluable in bad weather when snow blankets this area. The airport, and many of the buildings here have sloped shapes to handle the snow, and many of the buildings look like they were taken right from a winter village in the Swiss Alps, and dropped here at Fin de Mundo (the end of the world). I have a great picture of a bookstore I’ll share shortly, it’s one of the neatest I have ever seen and I hope to visit it again today if it is open!
Once at the hotel, we sat by the window and drank more than a few cups of coffee, enjoyed the view out the windows here looking out at the bay (pictures eventually, however the window was so dirty I’m not posting that one here!), and wrote some of this and yesterday’s post. At the same time, we planned dinner and headed to a barbecue place downtown once it was time. Neither of us were extremely hungry, but the next morning we had to be up early… and it was already approaching 8:00 PM when we took the bus into town.
Dinner was good, I had steak in a pepper sauce that was okay as far as steak goes, and Jen had a chicken meal that was also pretty good. Both were served with potatoes, and both were very bland overall (even with black peppercorn). It’s been our constant finding here that the food isn’t quite as flavorful as what we’d expect, and perhaps we just haven’t found the right restaurants just yet… we’re leaving for the boat tomorrow morning before a few more days in town upon our return. More about that when we’re back! Tonight it’s packing back into the suitcase, ensuring all the random things fit… and getting ready to hop on a boat.
