Date: Jan 29, 2008 5:42 PM
Subject: 1/29/2008
1/29/2008
USHUAIA, ARGENTINA
Again, it sounds like oosh why ah. It looks like it too. No, I don’t know what that means. It is located on the island of Tierra Del Fuego. It literally means, the land of fire. It more likely means Hades or Hell. This is what it is like where Hell freezes over. The island is half Argentina and half Chile.
If you look at a map of the bottom of South America, you will see a large section at the furthest south end. You have to look close to see that it is actually an island. That was not known until some
time ago, but not really long ago, I think. Beaver Channel is what separates it from the main land, but I told you that before. So pay attention and then I won’t have to replete myself so much.
Last night we had to turn our clocks ahead another hour. That’s three hours ahead of Miami time now. If you want to further confuse me, tell me that tomorrow we are going further east yet, but we turn the clocks back an hour to where they were yesterday. That’s what’s happening. And I thought I had no idea
what I was doing. These people can’t even tell time.
We had an early morning tour again. Naturally it was the usual confusion. We were docked and all we had to do was walk down the gang plank at the allotted time and get on the bus they point us too. Of course there was no bus for our tour nor was there anyone from the travel department out on the dock. They have got to get this together.
Finally the buses for our tour did show up. All seven of them. Again our guide was a nice young girl who spoke something I mostly could not understand.
This is a really gloomy little town. It never gets warm and is not fit for human or animal habitation. There were no mammals until they were introduced. They claim there were Indians 6,000 years ago, but I don’t know. If they were here, they were lost.
The towns big claim to fame is an old prison. They would send anything from serial killers to shop lifters to the prison. They made the prisoners build the prison and just about everything else. They claim no one escaped. When they got away they came back or died from cold and starvation as it never gets warm and there were no animals to eat. The entire population came from these prisoners who were allowed to have land once their sentence was up. Sounds like I said. The only reason to live here is if you are forced to do so.
There is a small downtown by the dock. This is where the streets are paved. Most other places we visited did not have paved roads. There are about three nice buildings and the rest were junk. They cannot ever get very high winds in the valley where the town is located. It they did, most of the buildings would blow over. One man on our bus asked if they had building codes. The answer was, what’s that? It is supposed to be a nature sanctuary and many of the houses are illegal.
Our tour was a drive through the area. The mountains surrounding the area were very nice but it was grey most of the day and that is how it almost always is. We even drove to the end of the earth. That is where the Pan American Highway ends at a bay. But the only way to get to this island is by a Chilean ferry.
At least it was as warm as it ever gets at about 55 for a high. As soon as we left the downtown area the roads were unpaved and made of white dust. Everything was hidden in clouds of white dust
coming from the vehicles driving on these roads. You could see the vegetation on the road sides covered with many inches of this dust. It was great to breathe too.
After a pretty long ride on a dust bowl road, through a forest, we came to a station with narrow gauge trains. The world’s furthest south railway. Ours was to be with a steam engine. The railroad had been originally created to haul out lumber and rocks for building. Now it is just for tourism.
It was a very nice train ride through the same type of forest as we had just come through on the bus. There were small rivers with rapids, all over the place. We say many horses, rabbits and Beaver dams. But strewn everywhere by the thousands, were old pieces of trees just felled and left to rot. These small trees take 80 years to be adult size and they just chop them down for the best parts and leave them lay. Whole forests are destroyed.
The little trains were cute and we enjoyed the ride. Then it was back to the bus for a long ride back to town were we visited the old prison. It was made into several different types of Museums and meeting rooms. We toured some of the old cells. I decided this was not the place for me. I spent a lot of years trying to stay out of places like this and I did not want to pay to be in one now.
When we got back to the ship we had a big decision to make. Tonight at 5:00 PM we were supposed to go back to the prison for a party for those doing the round trip on the ship. There was a card waiting in our room reminding us about our reservations at Signatures for 6:30 this evening. Oh decisions, decisions. Like that one was not even close. Go to a dank, stinky, old prison or the Cordon Blu restaurant. I was not thrilled about going back to the prison anyhow.
Dinner was fantastic. Escargot in pastry puff shells. It was like a roll scooped out and filled with about a dozen perfect snails. The whole thing is put in a large soup bowl and filled around the pastry with garlic butter. Next Bobbi had the most wonderful mushroom soup with creamed garlic and I had crab bisque with avocado to die for. Peach, Champaign, sorbet was next. That was one excellent popsicle. For the main course Bobbi had the rack of lamb and I had Tornados Rossini with a double of seared Foie Gras (seared goose liver). Everything was better then perfect as was the service by a real French waiter without an attitude. And those are really hard to come by.
USHUAIA, ARGENTINA
Again, it sounds like oosh why ah. It looks like it too. No, I don’t know what that means. It is located on the island of Tierra Del Fuego. It literally means, the land of fire. It more likely means Hades or Hell. This is what it is like where Hell freezes over. The island is half Argentina and half Chile.If you look at a map of the bottom of South America, you will see a large section at the furthest south end. You have to look close to see that it is actually an island. That was not known until some
time ago, but not really long ago, I think. Beaver Channel is what separates it from the main land, but I told you that before. So pay attention and then I won’t have to replete myself so much.Last night we had to turn our clocks ahead another hour. That’s three hours ahead of Miami time now. If you want to further confuse me, tell me that tomorrow we are going further east yet, but we turn the clocks back an hour to where they were yesterday. That’s what’s happening. And I thought I had no idea
what I was doing. These people can’t even tell time.We had an early morning tour again. Naturally it was the usual confusion. We were docked and all we had to do was walk down the gang plank at the allotted time and get on the bus they point us too. Of course there was no bus for our tour nor was there anyone from the travel department out on the dock. They have got to get this together.
Finally the buses for our tour did show up. All seven of them. Again our guide was a nice young girl who spoke something I mostly could not understand.This is a really gloomy little town. It never gets warm and is not fit for human or animal habitation. There were no mammals until they were introduced. They claim there were Indians 6,000 years ago, but I don’t know. If they were here, they were lost.
The towns big claim to fame is an old prison. They would send anything from serial killers to shop lifters to the prison. They made the prisoners build the prison and just about everything else. They claim no one escaped. When they got away they came back or died from cold and starvation as it never gets warm and there were no animals to eat. The entire population came from these prisoners who were allowed to have land once their sentence was up. Sounds like I said. The only reason to live here is if you are forced to do so.There is a small downtown by the dock. This is where the streets are paved. Most other places we visited did not have paved roads. There are about three nice buildings and the rest were junk. They cannot ever get very high winds in the valley where the town is located. It they did, most of the buildings would blow over. One man on our bus asked if they had building codes. The answer was, what’s that? It is supposed to be a nature sanctuary and many of the houses are illegal.Our tour was a drive through the area. The mountains surrounding the area were very nice but it was grey most of the day and that is how it almost always is. We even drove to the end of the earth. That is where the Pan American Highway ends at a bay. But the only way to get to this island is by a Chilean ferry.At least it was as warm as it ever gets at about 55 for a high. As soon as we left the downtown area the roads were unpaved and made of white dust. Everything was hidden in clouds of white dust
coming from the vehicles driving on these roads. You could see the vegetation on the road sides covered with many inches of this dust. It was great to breathe too.After a pretty long ride on a dust bowl road, through a forest, we came to a station with narrow gauge trains. The world’s furthest south railway. Ours was to be with a steam engine. The railroad had been originally created to haul out lumber and rocks for building. Now it is just for tourism.
It was a very nice train ride through the same type of forest as we had just come through on the bus. There were small rivers with rapids, all over the place. We say many horses, rabbits and Beaver dams. But strewn everywhere by the thousands, were old pieces of trees just felled and left to rot. These small trees take 80 years to be adult size and they just chop them down for the best parts and leave them lay. Whole forests are destroyed.
The little trains were cute and we enjoyed the ride. Then it was back to the bus for a long ride back to town were we visited the old prison. It was made into several different types of Museums and meeting rooms. We toured some of the old cells. I decided this was not the place for me. I spent a lot of years trying to stay out of places like this and I did not want to pay to be in one now.
When we got back to the ship we had a big decision to make. Tonight at 5:00 PM we were supposed to go back to the prison for a party for those doing the round trip on the ship. There was a card waiting in our room reminding us about our reservations at Signatures for 6:30 this evening. Oh decisions, decisions. Like that one was not even close. Go to a dank, stinky, old prison or the Cordon Blu restaurant. I was not thrilled about going back to the prison anyhow.
Dinner was fantastic. Escargot in pastry puff shells. It was like a roll scooped out and filled with about a dozen perfect snails. The whole thing is put in a large soup bowl and filled around the pastry with garlic butter. Next Bobbi had the most wonderful mushroom soup with creamed garlic and I had crab bisque with avocado to die for. Peach, Champaign, sorbet was next. That was one excellent popsicle. For the main course Bobbi had the rack of lamb and I had Tornados Rossini with a double of seared Foie Gras (seared goose liver). Everything was better then perfect as was the service by a real French waiter without an attitude. And those are really hard to come by.
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