Day 227 – Ushuaia, Argentina

This entry is going to be pretty wordy I expect, given how long it’s been since I wrote the last one. We flew back from Delhi on 6 January after a fairly miserable Christmas being so far away from home and frankly more than a little tired of the difficulties that India was throwing at us.

I had mixed feelings about Delhi; on the one hand I was pleased to be back there following a brief visit in 2003 and being able to spend more time looking around and appreciating the place, and on the other I was glad that this was the last stop in India before returning home. It seems so long since we were there that my enthusiasm has waned too much to write much about it, suffice to say that we did all the usual things that are to be done in Delhi including a trip to The Red Fort, The India Gate and a day excursion down to The Taj Mahal. Now, I knew the Taj was supposed to be stunning, but I just wasn’t prepared for how amazing it really is. Despite the heavy fog hanging over the whole place, I was blown away by its beauty. In fact, in some ways the fog made it appear even more exquisitely enigmatic. I managed to get a few pictures of it but they’ll never do it justice. It’s at times like that when I realise just how incompetent a photographer I am.

The flight back home seemed to take an eternity as the thick fog blanketing Delhi was causing serious delays at the airport. I was getting worried at one point that the flight may well be cancelled but good old British Airways didn’t let us down. Once home in the icy world of Orpington the first thing I wanted to do was to have a shower but the frozen pipe put paid to that so we switched on the heating (which was thankfully still working) , only for it to defrost the pipe and flood the house while we popped down the shops for a pint of milk. What terrible timing. I was so tired I just wanted sit on the soaking wet carpet and burst into tears, perhaps wetting it a little more. However, rationality took hold and the insurance company and a local plumber were soon on the case. At least the hot water was working after all that so I could take a shower and wash the towels that we’d used for mopping up all the water from the hall, landing and stairs carpets.

The past five weeks or so have really flown by and it’s quite difficult to account for my time. However, not limiting our worldly travels to purely exotic places, we booked a week down in Cornwall and thoroughly enjoyed it. The tranquillity, the familiarity and the beauty are only three of the qualities that retain Cornwall’s firm placement in my mind as one of my favourite places in the world. The pasties are great too, particularly from the little bakery in Marazion.

Back in Orpington we were treated to beautiful scenes of snow the following week and like a kid I couldn’t wait to go out and walk in it, making every excuse I could to pop down to the shops and shuffle around in the lovely white stuff. In fact, Richard and I were squabbling with each other that one wasn’t allowed to go out into the back garden unless they told the other so as not to spoil the pristine white blanket. Pathetic I know, but there’s something quite lovely about being the first person to crunch through the snow with their Wellies on, leaving a single trail of footprints.

Home is a long way away now as we are finally in Ushuaia after more than 24 hours travelling. The flights were fairly turbulent in places which was a bit scary after the previous aircraft incidents a couple of days before. Each flight was broken into two stages too so in all there were 4 landings and 4 take-offs which added to the tension. They all went without a hitch though, as far as we knew at least. The British Airways staff were very generous with the in-flight bar and after my third little bottle of Cabernet I was fast asleep and dreaming of where we were heading. We were greeted at Ushuaia airport and whisked off to our hotel where we settled and enjoyed the late evening view for a short while before heading off to the nearest Irish pub. Who’d believe that there are actually two of these Irish pubs in Ushuaia, a small town of only a few thousand people and settling right at the end of the Earth? They didn’t do Guinness though, despite all the signs indicating otherwise.

Our first full day in Ushuaia was spent wandering around the national park; a beautiful spot dotted with streams, lakes and huge wooded areas. The lakeside walks were stunning and the clean, fresh air soon flushed out any staleness from my lungs left over from the previous day’s flights. In the evening we thought we’d try out the second of the Irish pubs but it wasn’t a patch on the first so we ended back to the one we’d started at the previous night. Beagle, the black, locally brewed beer kind of looks like Guinness but is a pale imitation. It hasn’t got the body nor the smoothness that you would expect from a pint so dark, but it’s refreshing nonetheless. At least refreshing enough for us to partake in several rounds of the stuff. The following day, our luggage was picked up from the hotel and taken to the boat while we explored Ushuaia and what it had to offer. Sadly though, the legacy of The Spanish still lives on and we hit the shops round about siesta time so most of them were closed between 12:00 and 15:00. I felt like a frustrated kid with money burning a hole in his pocket but it was probably a good thing otherwise I might have bought all sorts of things that I really don’t need. I was particularly drawn to a penguin made out of died sheepskin.

Eventually it was time to go to the meeting point in order to be put aboard our boat, The Akademic Sergey Vavilov (you’d never guess it’s Russian would you!). As we were all milling around, sizing up the other passengers that we were going to spend the next 18 days with, it felt very much like the last Royale Family Christmas Special where we were supposed to ‘mingle’ as per the timetable. Rich and I just made a beeline for the bus and firmly planted ourselves there until it was time to embark.
I have to say that I’m much more impressed with the ship than I thought I would be. The cabins are a reasonable size, at least for the two of us and the facilities are very well thought out. During ‘Mingling – Part 2’ in the ship’s bar, where vodka and cranberry cocktails were being consumed in large quantities (due to them being free), we were encouraged to wear a name badge so that the other ‘minglers’ would know who they were mingling with. I have a feeling that this journey isn’t going to be one where there’s a lot of solitude and I’ll be forced out of the cosy shell of my cabin more than I’d really like. I don’t mind though, it’s a good way of seeking out the new and weird characters that make up the rest of the manifest. In some ways, I’m looking forward to seeing them as much of the other kinds of wildlife we’ll encounter on this ‘expedition’.