Day 5 – travel from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia

We had a very early start today to catch a 5:40 am flight to Ushuaia…the town that credits themselves as being the city closest to the south pole. There are about 90,000 permanent residents and many that come to work the tourist season between October and April.

Our chartered flight had a penguin on its tail. I hope that is not the only penguin I see on this trip. If it is, I will be very disappointed.

We did a bit of walking around town before settling in the Viking Octantis for our cruise. As you might imagine, I was able to find a few things that I “can’t live without.” LOL

Isn’t this a luxury ship …Too bad it isn’t our cruise ship.

As we embarked the ship, we went through the compulsory safety drill where Benjamin (one of the scientists) did a lovely demonstration of the life jackets. It is nice to see that they have a neoprene suit that covers the top half of the body.

There are some pretty fancy showers in the fitness and spa area.

The bucket shower:

This shower has at least six shower heads. I bet it has the potential to be at least a 9.

A snow grotto????

The mountains of Patagonia and the Andes are beautiful…it was a bit overcast so we were not able to see all of the tops. They are not so tall, but they look very rugged. The first picture below shows a no longer used prison. It was used for hard criminals as it would be very difficult to escape. Ushuaia sits on an island and I can imagine it would be quite a challenge to walk over the mountains that surround the city.

The puzzle table is just outside our cabin on the Octantis. I wonder how many hours I will spend there…

The shower in our stateroom probably rates a solid 8…It is difficult to keep the water from running out of the shower – especially when the ship is rocking.

Early this evening, we received a briefing on the submarine excursion…I don’t know that we will see much of interest, but Bill is very much wanting to take a dive in submarine, so I imagine we will do that during this cruise.