Ushuaia

Wednesday, January 15th, 2025

Thanks to the effort expended on our hike (not to mention a belly full (and THAT is not easy to achieve !) of pizza), I slept well and deeply. Nevertheless, I still woke up the “natural” way, a few minutes before the alarm was due. There were no ‘phone calls that day, or at least no “audible” ringing. I did not ask.

Bright sunlight was streaming through the windows – and I do mean bright. The Beagle channel was still glittering in the mid-distance and now several swallows were flitting about above the street. It remained hard to believe that we were almost as close to the Antarctic continent as we had ever been. That was another invisible “line” we would, all to soon, be crossing..

In the other direction, towards the harbour, there were no new and sinister silhouettes …….

We had, essentially, the same breakfast as the previous day and planned what we were going to do. I was sending daily updates to Prague and a friend, Paul, had created a word-square puzzle from the text of the previous day’s “report”. I spent a while seeking them out. 

V	I	S	A	M	B	U	B	K	W
T	J	C	I	L	I	S	B	N	T
J	L	N	S	O	G	H	D	A	B
X	I	O	W	N	P	U	U	T	U
I	M	B	A	G	I	A	D	M	Z
D	G	O	L	H	Z	I	S	B	Z
S	S	A	L	I	Z	A	G	C	A
C	D	T	O	K	A	M	N	M	R
A	L	U	W	E	R	I	X	Q	D
M	S	H	I	T	H	O	L	E	S

Find these words:
VISA
SWALLOW
LONGHIKE
SHITHOLE
BUZZARDS
USHUAIA
ATM
SCAM
BIGPIZZA
NOBOAT

The most difficult to find, for some reason, was “SCAM”. Those Jupiter boys had won again !

Looking out of our window, I could now see that a new vessel had appeared in the bay, It was a long way off, but it was altogether more purposeful in aspect than the liners. Was this, I wondered, our chariot to the south ?

We elected to take a walk into the town with a few tasks in mind. Firstly, we needed to locate the building called “Club 1210” where we would need to leave our rucksacks the next day for loading and “customs checks”. Secondly, in the face of the ridiculous ATM payout limits, we would be forced back into the evil clutches of the Jupiter exchange office and now, thirdly, we could go and take a look at the new boat.

Despite the sunshine, we donned our wind-breakers and headed down the hill. Lucie had devised a route that would allow us to walk to the sea, circumnavigate the harbour, find the drop-off point, scan the moored vessels and then change some money. The Czech map App, Mapy, was working overtime !

Although the sun was bright, the wind was actually pretty cold and, once we got to the more exposed areas by the water, really quite strong.

About half of the harbour was composed of a large and, presumably, fresh water lagoon called Encerrada. Ducks, of some “pintail” variety, bobbed in the choppy waters.

Our path led right around that area and then onto the neck of land that separated it from the sea. This led to a Naval base (I hoped that sentence does not constitute spying !) and it was in the process of being paved.

The “new” vessel was much nearer, by then, but I still could not make out its name.

Oddly, although we had walked there unimpeded, the causeway itself was fenced and, seemingly, in the process of being resurfaced. Following the example of other pedestrians, we slipped through a gap in the fencing and crossed the causeway in quite biting, blustery, winds. We were nervously watching the air above us because several types of gull were using its hard surface to crack-open crustaceans – and they were achieving that aim by dropping them onto the slabs from a great height ….

The fence at the town end had no easy way through, but I shifted a panel and we were back on land. There was a police car parked there, but its occupants watched our egress with no interest.

Back on the harbour proper, we ran into an exposition of the Falklands’ War, which was fought between Argentina and Great Britain in 1982. In an attempt to divert attention from domestic economic disaster, the then President of Argentina, General Galtieri, decided to seize the British possession of the Falkland Islands – and managed to do so. Sadly, for him, the then British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher was not about to roll-over. A fleet and troops were duly dispatched and, after a short and bitter struggle, the Union Jack was once again flying over Port Stanley. A lot of lives were lost, most of them Argentinian, particularly as a British submarine sent the pride of their fleet, the “General Belgrano” to the bottom of the South Atlantic. Most British people have more or less forgotten about it, you do not, after all, mess with us Brits. However, in Ushuaia, it was still very much alive to the point of “brain washing”. Hopefully, for the sake of the hapless Argentine armed forces, some future megalomaniac in the Pink Palace will not decide to have another go. The people should all read the history books, not from the 1980s, but from 1592 when a British vessel found the Falklands and also found them uninhabited.

We located Club 1210 fairly easily and then walked all the way along the waterfront to take a closer look at the ships. Suffice it to say that the newcomer was not the MV Plancius. My nervous wait would have to continue.

We did discover that it is now possible to take a day-trip to Puerto Williams on the Chilean side of the Beagle Channel. When we were on the other side, eight years ago, there was considerable antipathy between the two nations. A conflict, for the most southern tip of the continent, was another one that Argentina lost – and the Chileans were not backward in reminding them of that. An immense Chilean flag, at least twenty metres long was fluttering on a pole above the town, no doubt clearly visible from the moon, let alone, from the northern shore of the Beagle Channel. We would see Puerto Williams again in the evening of the next day, shortly after we set sail. That was something we had never expected to do. It would be interesting to see how it had changed in the intervening eight years. According to Lucie’s research, a fish processing factory, which was under construction in 2017, was now finished. When we were there there was only one hostel and a few private homes to stay in, one cafe and one little restaurant that we could find. Now, if Google was to be believed, there were two hotels and some real restaurants.

On our trudge towards the clutches of the Jupiter office, we found a different and far more “business-like” looking bank. Sadly, its ATMs had the same ludicrously low withdrawal limits, not even enough for a cup of coffee each. So the Jupiter exchange it was. For some odd reason, we actually got a far better rate that time. The “extra” was enough, strangely to buy us both a cup of coffee AND a cake at the Martinez “M” café as we walked back down the Avenida San Martin. We had visited that establishment on our first day and, in a land of distinctly mediocre coffee, it remained a shining beacon. The waiter remembered us and made Lucie a good ristretto, which she drank whilst eating a nice Tiramisu. I contented myself with a hot chocolate and an excellent muffin.

To avid another dismal trip to Carrefour, we decided to buy more water (and some chocolate for the voyage) in a different supermarket “La Anonima”. Unbelievably, this managed to make us wish that we had gone to Carrefour ! It took about two minutes to find the stuff we wanted, then almost thirty minutes in the “ten items or less” queue to pay for it – and it was not a long queue. Those cashiers would not have lasted five minutes in an Albert in Prague.

Back in our hostel and still without our en-suite, we warmed up and ate our pizza from the previous evening. Why does pizza always taste better, next day, than when they have just made it ? THAT is what science should be studying !

We took it easy after lunch and yes, I DID nod-off. In late afternoon it began to rain heavily – and this was interspersed, at times, with SNOWFLAKES ! The wind became so strong we believed we could feel the house moving ! Talk about four seasons in a day, we were glad we had not gone on another hike ! Luckily, this precipitation had almost stopped before we headed down the hill, yet again, for our evening meal.

We had decided to go “sea food” and had already pre-selected the place. This was “La Cantina de Freddy” which, like everything there, was on the Avenida San Martin. On the Avenida, there was still lots of visible “Falklands” propaganda. There also a lot of murals, on memorial walls, to “Los Deseparacidos” (The “disappeared“). The war in the Falklands was basically started to distract the population from the fact that the then regime would pick up its opponents – and they were never seen again. Apparently some were thrown out of helicopters over the sea ….

The cantina had big, scary crabs in tanks in the window and the menu looked interesting. We got there just before it opened at 19:00 and so secured a table. By 19:15, it was totally full. We had salmon/trout with rice (Lucie) and Black Hake with mashed potatoes (me). Sensible portion sizes, delicious food and a nice, almost playful, atmosphere. We both enjoyed the bread pudding as desert. A payment terminal not made by Clover meant Lucie’s MasterCard worked easily, result !!

We ended up talking to Wanda, a Canadian lady from Vancouver. She was not only at the next table, but was also, perhaps not unsurprisingly, going to be on our boat. It is a small world !

We walked home in unusually dim light. There were a lot of dark clouds. How encouraging. By the same time on the following day, we would be underway on our great adventure. Hooray, I think …..