Day 9 – Hidden Bay
We had another special operations boat cruise (SOB) as our scheduled excursion. It was the last SOB cruise that day and we were lucky enough to find a few humpback whales. This was a prime feeding spot for the whales with all the available krill. We soon were surrounded by whale after whale. They were bubble feeding and didn’t seem to be bothered by our boat.
It was an amazing experience. We watched for the bubbles and the sea birds and then the whales would surface to swallow the krill that they had trapped in these nets of bubbles. Truely amazing!!!!
We couldn’t stop taking pictures. We were probably watching these whales for around 40 minutes.
And we saw a couple Crabeaters seals too.
Well, along with being the last SOB tour of the day it was our last excursion for the trip and the ship started heading back to Ushuaia. We attended a few more lectures. And we went to the open house of the ship’s hanger area. This is where they store all the toys. So, we were able to view the sub out of the water, which was pretty cool.
We also got to visit the laboratory and view some of the projects that the onboard science staff was working on.
That night was the Captain’s Farewell reception. He had told us earlier in the day that the trip back through the Drake would be a different story then we experienced on the way down. He was trying to hurry so that the worst of it would be around 1am. It was already rocking at the reception.
I was feeling it and took a Dramane in addition to the patches. We got to experience the “Drake Shake”. We were told that it was probably about 7-8 on a scale of 10. It was a little rough sleeping that night. Will must have been a sailor in a past life because he was unaffected.
We made our way back through the Beagle Channel and pulled into port around 7pm. So, only one more night on the ship. 😢
We got off the ship the next morning and walked over to our hotel in Ushuaia. We chose to stay an additional 3 nights in Ushuaia and check-out the town. After all it isn’t every day that you get to the “End of the World” (Fin del Mundo). Ushuaia considers itself the “End of the World” by being the “southernmost city”. Puerto Williams in Chile is further south, but with only 2,000 residents it is the “southernmost town”.
The hotel had our room ready, and we were able to check-in. That was fantastic as nothing in town was open that early in the morning.
We walked over to visit the museums in town. They have converted the old prison into somewhat of a museum complex. Ushuaia was designated as a penal colony by the Argentine government in the 1890’s to establish an Argentine presence there. At first, they did not even have any walls keeping the prisoners from escaping as the warden felt there was not where for them to go. Usually, those that did manage to escape were brought back in a few weeks because of lack of food.
There are some good exhibits about the native people, the Yaghans. They had survived down in the Tierra del Fuego area for thousands of years until European missionaries came. The missionaries tried to assimilate the native people. But unfortunately, they wound up killing them with the infectious diseases they brought with them. The last full-blooded Yaghan died in the 1920’s. In spite of the cold weather the Yaghans wore little clothing. They would cover themselves with animal fat and huddle around small fires to keep warm.
There were also a maritime museum and an Antarctic museum inside the prison. We initially thought that maybe we’d be there a couple of hours and ended up spending the whole day. We got back to our hotel, and I heard what sounded like a parade outside. We looked out the window and indeed people were marching down the street. It was a labor protest. We found out from news that it was a country wide protest, and they were threatening to strike if the government didn’t listen.
The Tierra del Fuego National Park is just outside of Ushuaia. We still had our park pass so the following day we picked up our rental car and drove out to check out the park. We picked up a hitchhiker inside the park. Arthur was a young guy from France that was touring South America for a few months.
We did a couple of hikes in the park and stopped for lunch at the restaurant inside the park.
The Buoy Hike (Senda de la Baliza).
The Costera Trail.
We still had the car for another day, so we drove to do the Lake Esmeralda hike. The reviews of the trail described it as muddy, muddy, and muddy. They did not lie, it was muddy. But I still enjoyed the hike as we got to explore yet another area, the lake was pretty, and we got to make a stop at the End of the World Sign.
Our time in Ushuaia was up as well as our vacation. We arrived at the airport the next morning to chaos. There were cancelled flights because of the strike and employees not showing up to work. Luckily our flight to Buenos Aires had not been cancelled, but the lines to check-in and go through security were incredible. We did meet a nice couple on the flight that had just come back from their Antarctic adventure. We had a good time talking with Kristin and we were able to give her our SUBE card as they would be staying in Buenos Aires for a couple of days. We continued on with our flight to Houston and eventually back to Albuquerque.
For those of you who asked why? Why Antarctica? Why Argentina? Hopefully, we’ve given you some of the reasons why we wanted to go there.