Day 4: Ushuaia and Going to the Boat
(This is part of a series of re-posts from my trip to Antarctica in 2009)
Paul is nice but he snores and breathes like Darth Vader when sleeping. I gave up after a while and shoved earplugs in which helped enough that I could fall asleep. We’ll have to see if this is a regular nightly occurrence, and if so I’ll likely say something.
The hotel is hot. Not in a “wow, that’s a damn fine looking hotel” but more like a “hey look at us we may be in the middle of nowhere but we can produce heat!” way. We slept with the window open all night and it was still far too toasty. Breakfast was fine. They had peanut jam. Not badly translated peanut butter, but actual peanut jam. Huh.
Ushuaia is at about the same latitude as Flin Flon in Manitoba. It’s… quaint? There are some massive fancy houses here and a lot of rundown places that approach shacks. There are several places where I can’t tell if the building is going up or coming down.
Today there were two tours we could optionally sign up for, one a trip to a local national park and the other a 4 mile hike. Both cost $50 (that’s dollars, not pesos). Um, no thanks. So I dumped my bags at the front desk (along with EVERYONE else!) and went into town with Rami (from Finland). We walked around downtown Ushuaia which looks like a costal town in Nova Scotia, but with crap shops like Jasper. Man there are a lot of crap shops. We bumped into Jeff Schewe, Kevin (from Phase One), Seth Resnick, and a few other folks at the wine shop and took photos of them while they stocked up on three cases for the boat. Funny.
I stopped in one of the crap shops and got a neck gaiter thingy. Then Rami and I headed over to some random restaurant with Michael and his crew and had lunch. I ordered local trout and got farmed salmon. Oh well. I sat next to a guy who’s a federal prosecutor in Toronto. Neat! Oh, and for some reason, I’m reminded about something regarding my BA dinner from last night: along with the sweetbread I had lamb ball. That’s actual lamb ball, not balls made of lamb. Well, they are made of lamb since they came from the lamb, but you get what I mean.
Over lunch I let Jeff get all his Microsoft and film stuff off his chest. He’s a funny guy. I believe “horse hoof” was mentioned a couple of times in relation to film. He’s hilarious. Really.
We saw our boat in the harbour while walking around. It’s small and looks nice. Can’t wait! The bus leaves from our hotel at 3pm. We have to go through some sort of security at the port (more x-rays, wonderful), I think we have to get our passport stamped (since technically we’re leaving the country) and then we’re on our way. YAY!