Drake Passage by this time tomorrow!

Friday, 27-Jan-2023, 10:30pm Argentina time
Quieter day today than yesterday. We all slept in or tried to sleep in. After lunch, the girls decided to take a long walk to the other side of the water by the port. The walk wound up being about 3 hours, and they made it basically all the way to the airport. They took some very nice pictures, I will try to appropriate some and post them here.

I declined the long walk, wanting to save my bad feet as much as possible for Antarctic festivities (not to mention being over twice their age). I took a short walk near the hotel after lunch, then spent most of the afternoon getting my online blog up to date, and fighting with some websites on my laptop. Apparently if Yahoo, FB, Google, etc. detect that you're trying to login from an Argentinian IP address, you suddenly learned to speak and read Spanish. 

Our hotel, Las Lengas

Small, hilly park across the street from our hotel, Plaza Mozart

Lake and mountains, looking down the street from our hotel

View of the port from a couple blocks down from our hotel

When they got back, we sat in the lobby for a couple hours, putzing online and enjoying the view. Mel and Colleen looked for places for dinner downtown, near the port. The first place we went to advertised opening at 8:00pm. When we got there at 7:55, every table was full, and a few other parties were waiting ahead of us. Friday night in downtown Ushuaia. Fortunately they had a backup plan.

We walked around the corner, and about a block and a half up this ridiculously steep (had to be ~40 degrees or so), pock marked sidewalk. I bet Ushuaia has more potholes per square mile than Chicago. And the sidewalks are very uneven and chewed up. Having not fallen, it was worth the walk. We got a table at Dublin Pub, a fairly genuine Irish bar. 60s and 70s US and British rock was playing, which eased my music withdrawal. The food was pretty good too. It started to drizzle before we left, so the walk back down Mt. Dublin Pub was challenging. 

Starting tomorrow, our days will be more structured. We need to have our luggage packed and tagged, and in the lobby by 10:00am to be taken to the ship. Lunch between then and 12:30. At 12:30, we take a shuttle to the other hotel where passengers on our cruise are staying, and where the COVID inquisition will take place. At 3:30, we start to board the Quark Ocean Adventurer. Some time after that, we head out through Beagle Channel to the Drake Passage, pointed toward the Antarctic Peninsula.