Hello Ushuaia

After leaving the lodge we arrived in Punta Arenas and had a wonderful dinner with new friends from Santiago who had shared the experience at Explora with us.  Wonderful meal and wine and lots of laughs before an early rise and the bus trip!

THE BUS TRIP!!!!  Our 37th Wedding Anniversay

What can I tell you?  The scenery is incredible, vast plains thousand of kilometres of flat land with a backdrop of the most amazing variety of blues and unusual clouds.  Sheep, cattle, strange birds and fences and gates and houses and rough, narrow roads, the bus constantly slowing down for pot holes or passing traffic.  Smiling people and a 3 year old girl with a toy that played 3 blind mice over and over and over and over again.

Border control, passports, papers, more smiles and nods and then, OK unpack the bus... yes everything... and bring it inside to the scanner!

The Atlantic Ocean on our right, a small town to change busses and ... there are two to may people for the next part of our trip, would you like to get off and wait for the next bus!???  (No we didn´t, but a young pair of back packer´s did volunteer, but not until after the next bus had arrived and they made sure there were seats on it, experienced travellers for sure!!)

13hours later we arrived in Ushuaia,  the southern most city in the world.  One of the most scenic drives you can imagine through scnow-capped mountains and lake-filled valleys before arriving over the crest with a view of the town at the edge of the Beagle Channel and ... next stop Antactica. 

Christmas window Ushuaia

We met 2 Australians on the bus, young back packers who downloaded lots of my photos onto a memory stick for me as we drove along through Tierra del Fuego... surreal.  I gave them a bag of licorice that I had bought in Australia in return,  and you would have thought it was Christmas from the looks on their faces.  (Hang On - It Is Christmas!)

So lunch for our anniversary was chocolate from the Chilean border and a a hot dog from the Argentinian border 5 km away (the land in between is in dispute -  no-mans land) and a coffee from a tiny town called Tolhuin along the way.  Dinner was a packet of chips and a lemonade from the mini bar as we arrived here so late.

Today (16th) we have had a lovely walk and lunch in town, as >I wandered through the many and varied tourist shops amd peered in the window of delicatesans, bakeries and chocolate shops, the snow was falling. It is very cold and we have decided to eat in the restaurant of the hotel tonight.

In the morning we will be able to watch our little ship from our bedroom window as it sails up the Beagle Channel.  It is to arrive at 7.00am.  I am so excited.