Brrrr. So much for the summer heat in Santiago! Ushuaia (at latitude 54 degrees South) is the southernmost city in the world! Jack and I arrived a day ahead of my family so got a chance to walk around a bit and check out the town. Quite weird to feel like I´m in a ski town but not going skiing. Cool though. It felt like a combination of all the ski towns I've been too but different again to be in a foreign-language speaking ski town. Guess I need to ski (snowboard) in Europe sometime.
Anyway, we wandered around a bit and I tried out my basic Spanish (and Jack his intermediate Spanish). Both went down reasonably well and managed to get us some beers and huge schnitzel sandwiches for dinner. Back to the hostel for a decent night's sleep but it wasn't to be. Music pumped in the reception/commonn room until about 1am. Proper, pounding (crap) nightclub music. Bloody nightmare, wish we hadn't paid two nights up front.
The next day my family arrived from Buenos Aires. So awesome to have my family all together at the end of the world! We all had some lunch together then Evan, Jack and I did some travel admin, spending most of the rest of the day trudging around booking buses, hostels and tours for our return from Antarctica. Huge dinner of king crab in the evening and a very nice bottle of malbec later, we were back to he nightclub-hostel but this time stayed up late with a couple of French backpackers for a game of anglo-franco Scrabble. Heaps of fun (and another cheeky malbec to go with it).
Finally departure day! We checked out and Jack, Ev and I headed up into the hills above the town to check out the local glacier. It was rather colder than I expected (I guess we were in the mountains) and it turned out to be a 1.5 hour hike each way to the glacier (from the top of the chairlift) so we just did a quick walk and then headed back to pick up our bags and make our way to the port. We were onboard the Polar Pioneer by 5pm and set sail that evening out the Beagle Channel and into the Drake Passage, bound for Antarctica!
Anyway, we wandered around a bit and I tried out my basic Spanish (and Jack his intermediate Spanish). Both went down reasonably well and managed to get us some beers and huge schnitzel sandwiches for dinner. Back to the hostel for a decent night's sleep but it wasn't to be. Music pumped in the reception/commonn room until about 1am. Proper, pounding (crap) nightclub music. Bloody nightmare, wish we hadn't paid two nights up front.
The next day my family arrived from Buenos Aires. So awesome to have my family all together at the end of the world! We all had some lunch together then Evan, Jack and I did some travel admin, spending most of the rest of the day trudging around booking buses, hostels and tours for our return from Antarctica. Huge dinner of king crab in the evening and a very nice bottle of malbec later, we were back to he nightclub-hostel but this time stayed up late with a couple of French backpackers for a game of anglo-franco Scrabble. Heaps of fun (and another cheeky malbec to go with it).
Finally departure day! We checked out and Jack, Ev and I headed up into the hills above the town to check out the local glacier. It was rather colder than I expected (I guess we were in the mountains) and it turned out to be a 1.5 hour hike each way to the glacier (from the top of the chairlift) so we just did a quick walk and then headed back to pick up our bags and make our way to the port. We were onboard the Polar Pioneer by 5pm and set sail that evening out the Beagle Channel and into the Drake Passage, bound for Antarctica!
