Ushuaia, Argentina February 13

We got up early to see the "Avenue of the Glaciers" along the Beagle channel.  We saw a few but nothing like the last time we were here when the weather was much better.

Pretty views along the Beagle Channel














We arrived in Ushuaia at 11 am.  It is the southern most city in the world and is the gateway to Antarctica.  There were three smaller cruise ships along the same dock that are the ones that go to the arctic for ten day trips.  For a change we were the largest ship in the port!  All three of these ships left port in the early evening.  Our tour guide informed us that they get about 350 cruise ships each summer (December to May) and most are going to the Arctic.

Our small ship looks huge campared to the Artic ships 

The dock is right in the middle of town 

One of the arctic cruise ships as it leaves the dock















Our tour today was mostly a scenic bus ride over a low point in the Andes.  We were actually driving on the Pan American Highway.  We also had a typical lunch at a "snow resort" where they have dog sledding and other winter activities.  The main part of the lunch was lamb that had been cooked on vertical racks placed around a fire of large burning logs.  We were told that lamb is the only meat they have in this area and that all of their supplies have to come by truck from Buenos Aires which is a four day trip.

The lamb cooking inside glass enclosed building 

Beautiful flowers in front of the restaurant














One of the interesting things our tour guide told us was that in the 1940's fifty pairs of beavers were brought to the area from Canada to start a fur industry.  Unfortunately the winters here are not that cold and the fur was not of good quality and now the beavers number in the hundreds of thousands and are destroying the ecology as they have no predators here.

The weather was quite cold and we had periods of rain, sleet, hail, and even some snow flurries.  The wind was also blowing quite hard so we were glad that most of our tour was just a bus ride.

Just after we sat down to dinner the captain came on the PA and stated that we had apparently run over a fishing net or line and that one of the propellers might be damaged and we could not cruise at top speed so we were going to cancel our next scheduled stop at Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands.  This is very disappointing as this was a stop we had missed on our previous cruise in this area.  We were really looking forward to our planned tour to see penguins and to have real English fish and chips.

We are still under code red restrictions and now we cannot even get any of the usual snacks at cocktail hour.  Tom misses the mixed nuts and Noel misses the potato chips!  They also do not serve any hot or cold canapes.  No one can use the laundry rooms, no salt and pepper or sugar and cream on the tables.  We can't even have the jigsaw puzzles or table games. It is really getting to be a real pain but we have managed to stay healthy.