- Buenos Aires, Argentina — the stopover
- Ushuaia and Tierra del Fuego National Park, Argentina
- The Falkland Islands
- South Georgia Island
- On the “road” to Antarctica, Christmas aboard the Fram, and Elephant Island
- Yankee Harbor and Deception Island, Antarctica
- Danco and Cuverville Islands, Antarctica
- Almirante Brown Station and Neko Harbor, Antarctica
- A surprise visit, Lemaire Channel, and Petermann Island
- The voyage home, New Year’s Eve, and some final thoughts
To begin our cruise, we had to fly from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost city in the world. It is a fairly gritty city that has a different times a missionary outpost for the local indigenous people, a penal colony, a mining town, a transshipment stop for ships going to the Falklands and/or Antarctica, and tourist town. Ushuaia also has a naval base that participated in the Falklands War. You might remember the cruiser General Belgrano that was sunk by the British — it was home-ported here.
But Ushuaia is also the gateway to Tierra del Fuego National Park and rest of Patagonia. Before boarding our ship, we had an opportunity to tour the Tierra del Fuego National Park. This really represents the Argentine side of the island of Tierra del Fuego (on the other side of the mountains is Chile). The park also marks the southern terminus of the Pan-American Highway, earning it the nickname “The End of the World.” The park obviously experienced a lot of glacial activity and, as a consequence, it is made up of mountains, valleys, lakes, rivers, etc. There is supposed to be some amazing fly fishing in the area and Deb found ourselves commenting on various locations and how they must hold a ton of trout! There are lots of animals in the area, with over 90 species of birds and 20 species of terrestrial mammals, including beaver and muskrat. It is amazing how much damage the beavers (who appear to be overpopulated) have done, with fallen trees all over the place and lots of dams. Anyway, we had an opportunity to take a few short hikes and were amazed by the natural beauty.
It was then time to head back to Ushuaia and board our ship — the MS Fram. I’ll talk more about the Fram on a subsequent post, but we had sailed before with Hurtigruten on her sister ship, Midnatsol, up in the fjords of Norway. It is a small ship cruise (we had around 270 passengers onboard from 17 different nations (the US was actually 4th in number behind Great Britain, China, and Germany)). Upon getting aboard, we checked into our stateroom and came up for the mandatory safety briefing and champagne (I’m not sure the champagne was mandatory, but I didn’t see anyone turn it down!). Shortly thereafter, we left Ushuaia via the Beagle Passage to start our 3500 nautical mile, 16 day cruise.
I am a traveler and sometimes clay sculptor, following a long career working in consulting. My work allowed me to travel the world extensively and I was hooked. Today, I travel with my wife/best friend to explore new places, meet new people, and learn new things.
