Ushuaia, Buenos Aires, and the trip home

 I'm writing this from home, laundry in the washing machine, cat firmly glued to my lap (now that she has forgiven me).

We arrived in Ushuaia around 6am.  Ushuaia is a beautiful city from the water.  And we arrived at sunrise which didn't hurt either.

We had to have our bags outside the cabin by 6:30am so they could sort it by 'who's going where'.  Julie had a 9am flight so she had to be on a bus by 7. We were the last to disembark because we really had nowhere to be.  But they took us to a hotel on the main drag, across from the taxi stand.

Those aren't all mine but it felt like it
every time I had to carry my bags

Bus #1.  

Diane and Stephen, people we got to know on the ship.  
This is in the Tourist Centre, where we visited a lot!

After some confusion and much carrying of our bags up hill, we found our AirBnB room.  I didn't take any pictures but it was fine.  Ushuaia is a giant hill.  Everything is uphill, even things downhill seem to be uphill.  We walked a lot.  It is a small town so it seemed silly to take a taxi for 8 blocks but those 8 blocks were always straight up.  

First stop, lunch.  Then we walked over to the prison on the edge of town.  I wanted to see about the prison tour. But it turned out to be something like $50 so, no.  But I took pictures of the outside.

I'm pretty sure I ate food too but that is barely noteworthy

View from one of the many hills

The prison

I think we went home to take a nap but then we went to a fancy restaurant called Kalma.  I had started by looking for a place that served King Crab, which is a specialty here, but ended up finding Kalma.  

It was, of course, uphill.  We were lucky, it is not near the tourist areas so we got a table in their little restaurant without a reservation.  We both had the tasting menu.  I am so tempted to show you a picture of every course, they were so pretty but I will try to restrain myself. 

This is the 'snacks'.  Butter soaked crab, deep fried seaweed on
seaweed hummus, scallops, and smoked salmon

This is the 'appetizer'.  King crab meat with a herb pesto smear

The next day, we had to change money, print our boarding passes and try to take the prisoner train. We gave up on the train and park tour.  No time for both.  

We also needed to figure out what to do with our luggage while we wandered around town.  There was a hostel near by that agreed to watch our bags for the day.  First stop, walk there (not uphill miraculously) and dump our stuff

The money changing place opened at 10am.   We got there just at 10 to the surliest cashier guy but he changed our last bits of money.  We managed to change our Canadian to American on the ship, at a terrible rate, and then this guy also gave us a terrible rate.  But what are you going to do when it is Sunday and this guy is the only guy.  Take it and give him a return surly stare.  

A quick breakfast at the Banana Bar y Cafe which gets a mention exclusively because of its name. Oh, it's in Spanish so you may not understand.  Let me translate:  Banana Bar and Cafe.  :)

We took those croissants with us for a snack later. 
There were all we got to eat until 11 that night so 
good thing we did 

Then back to the tourist office, for like the fourth or fifth time to get them to print our boarding passes.  The people in that centre are the nicest, most patient people on the end of the earth.

Then  a taxi to the train station which is about 20 minutes out of town.  The train was scheduled for noon. We got there around 11:30.  The taxi guy said if he didn't get another fare, he would wait for us.  Everyone else there was on a tour bus so we said sure, please.  

rush to the ticket booth, all excited.  The train is totally sold out! What, how can this be, we got there late, we didn't reserve and it is high season but they 100% should have saved us a seat.  So rude!  Haha.  They were very nice and put us on the waiting list.  We wandered around, watched the line to get on the train get very long.  If we got tickets, we were resigned to sitting on an aisle away from a window but still better than nothing.

A few minutes before noon, we get the nod.  We are on!  And it turns out, there are no aisle seats.  Every group gets their own little car.  Window seats for ALL!  

The station

The waiting list guy

Our own little car

The scenery is absolutely stunning. And the weather was perfect once again.Prepare yourself for more photos taken through a window out of a moving vehicle of some sort.  

Not a real prisoner

Those are the stumps of trees cut down
by prisoners a hundred years ago for fuel for the town

We were far more interesting than the scenery for this little guy

That was a two hour round trip.  Back into our taxi. I'm sure he was glad he waited.  He took us back into town to pick up our bags, then backtracked to the airport.  The airport had the best views of all.  And a lapwing nesting right on the lawn.

The airline had two posted weights for checked bags, free (15 kg or so) and then up to 23 kg for extra cost.  Over that was not allowed.  Amy's bag was over 23 kg but they just smiled and let us through.  Whew!

Flight was uneventful.  Taxi back to Waldorf where they put us in a single room with the tiniest double bed.  Um, no.  They didn't have a double available so they gave us a second single.  Well, that was so comfortable, we just decided to pay for the second single for our second night.  We needed the room to pack, if nothing else.  We still each had a second bag stored at the Waldorf that would need to be repacked and our new stuff redistributed over the two bags. 

The next day was pretty lazy.  We walked along a nice shopping street that I have already forgotten the name of, it starts with an F.  - Florida.  Unbelievably, I didn't buy anything.  I still have 7000 pesos to spend!

We found a small place that made a nice steak.  Last dinner in Argentina definitely requires a steak. 

Next day, we went to El Ateneo, 'the most beautiful bookstore in the world'.  It is an old theatre and they didn't really renovate it at all except to add bookshelves.  They really know how to build a theatre in this city.

We had always planned to go to the botanical gardens when we were in Palermo but never got to it.  It was over 30 degrees on our last day so a nice treed area seemed like a good idea.  The street was boiling so it couldn't get hotter.  Plus we still had money on our Subway cards.

Hummingbird

There were a lot of statues in this park and pretty much
every one of them was a naked woman

And then we picked up our bags from the hotel and headed to the airport.  Here is my last photo as we got into the taxi.

The gift shops in the airport sucked so I just bought candy with my left over pesos.  I should be popular in staff meetings for the next while.

Our trip home was a bit of a gong show.  First flight from Buenos Aires to Houston was fine.  But in Houston we had a wee bit of engine failure.  Easily fixed with a replaced fuse but that took almost two hours.  About half an hour too long for us to make our connection in Calgary.  

So, what with border and having to pick up our luggage for the inspection that they didn't do, we were stranded in Calgary.  Much discussion with Air Canada.  We were in our transfer point between United and Air Canada.  AC, not shockingly, really took no responsibility for us.  They were very nice and booked us a flight to Vancouver but we were not getting a hotel room out of them.  And the last flight from Vancouver to Victoria was already overbooked.  

So, we got to Vancouver and found an Air Canada agent.  The chances of getting onto that last flight were non-existent.  She whispered, 'why don't you just take the ferry'.  Another mad dash to get our bags out of storage.  We had picked up another thruple by then. A woman who was on our late flight and didn't know what to do.  So, we just dragged her along with us.  

Uber to the ferry and onto the 9pm boat!  Amy's friend Sarah picked us up and I was in my bed, purring cat on my chest by midnight!  HOME!  

And that is the end of this trip.  See you all next time.