Thursday 21st January – 28th January, Ushuaia, Argentina

Another early start and we’re out on a boat in the Beagle Channel, where Captain Cook travelled through before discovering Australia. It’s a great morning... we see sea lions, cormorans, ducks and geese! When we make it back to land, we happen to pass a travel agent with an incredible deal on an icebreaker to Antarctica... hhmmm the mind starts ticking.
After a quick bite for lunch, we visit the Herberton Estancia - the oldest farm in Ushuaia to see a Penguin colony. These cute fluffy animals are everywhere and it’s amazing that we get so close to them. The long day is topped off with a hot cup of tea and homemade rhubarb slice at the estancia. Later in the evening (after a few drinks) we make the decision to go to Antartica. The opportunity is too good to pass up.
The following day, we hike the coastal track of the Beagle Channel in the Tierra del Fuego national park, followed by a trip down one of the tributaries in a canoe – which turns into a race ...... everybody knows how competitive Sav is ;) This is our last night with the great bunch of people we have shared the last 2 weeks of adventures with and our tour leader, Andres, has organised a great Argentinean BBQ at the hostel for us. There’s plenty of drinking and singing till early in the morning.
After sad farewells in the morning we have a very easy day before meeting up with the other Intrepid tour that we have bumped into many times in the last week. It’s great seafood followed up by a solid session in the Irish Pub with some of the guys that we will hopefully meet up with in Rio.
After the hectic schedule of the las fortnight we’ve got another 4 days in Ushuaia before we sail to the Antarctic. We check into a nice hotel for a couple of nights and then organise to a cabin in the foothills of the glacier for our remaining 3 nights. It’s a very relaxing time doing lots of reading, hiking and cooking. Our growing excitement at the prospect of getting to Antarctica is only slightly tempered by the travel agent’s assurance that it is “only very rough in the drake passage (2 days of sailing in the southern ocean) about 90% of the time!”