December 28

Day 2  Embarkation

This morning, enjoy breakfast and check-out.  Please ensure your cabin luggage is fitted with cabin tags, clearly labelled with your name and cabin number.  Take your cabin luggage to hotel reception, prior to or at check-out.  Your luggage will be stored and transferred directly to the port for clearance, to be placed in your cabin ahead of your arrival on board.  Please keep any valuables or personal items with you throughout the day.

Those wishing to join our Lake Escondido tour today, please meet in the hotel lobby at 8:45 am.  This tour offers us an unforgettable panoramic drive through big valleys of glacial origin, evergreen and deciduous forests, waterfall and rivers, in the vastness of the Andes Mountain Range.  We will leave Ushuaia city to the northeast of Tierra del Fuego, driving through peat bog valleys to reach Garibaldi Pass, only accessible by a winding road that will take us to a panoramic point.  From here we will have amazing panoramic views of Lake Escondido and, if weather conditions allow, of Fagnano Lake.  We will start our descent towards the northeast to reach Fagnano Lake's shore where we will visit a local ranch.  After appreciating the landscape, you will have the chance to enjoy the typical Fuegian Lamb barbecue.  Enjoy some free time there before returning to Ushuaia for ship embarkation.

Once onboard, you'll have time to settle into your cabin before our important mandatory briefings.  As the ship pulls away from port, we'll gather on the deck to commence our adventure with spectacular views over Ushuaia and Tierra del Fuego.  

This evening get to know your fellow expeditioners and friendly expedition team and crew at a welcome dinner to celebrate the start of a thrilling adventure to Antarctica.  

A pretty mellow day.  I joined the tour that was offered.  Looks like lots of takers - we had almost three full busses.  Not the ideal weather day for it as it was showery with low hanging clouds.  Oh well - really just a way to kill time until we were able to get on the boat.  A few pictures from our outing.

At Garibaldi Pass......

At Lake Fagnano.  The island of Tierra del Fuego is shared by Argentina (E) and Chile (W)  This large lake which runs east-west is in both countries - 74 km in Argentina and 14 km in Chile.

Back to Ushuaia and out for lunch as a group.  In my second small world moment, the couple I sat beside are from Davis CA and they know a woman I know from biking.  In my first small world moment earlier in the day, I met a couple from Calgary who (until a recent move) lived about 1km from my house.

Around 3:30 we were back on the busses and headed for the pier.  Passed a vivid reminder of the unfriendly waters down here.  Lots of shipwrecks over the years.

Busy day in the harbour today.  A big Princess boat was hogging a lot of pier space, so we were one of several boats anchored further out so we had to take a shuttle boat to get to it.  

None of the boats in the pics below was ours.

The whole boarding process was very efficient.  Oh - and there were delicious snacks involved.  I think I'll be very comfortable in my quarters.

We made good use of the lecture theatre - orientations and briefings, followed by the mandatory lifeboat drill.  Good dinner and more "getting settled" activities after that.  We headed out into the Drake Passage overnight.  It wasn't the Drake Shake, nor was it the Drake Lake.  Definitely some wind and wave action, but I slept pretty well.  I did proactively take some motion sickness tablets and felt fine the next morning.  I'll probably stay with them until we're through the worst of it.