Ushuaia, Argentina, and the Beagle Channel

That night we sailed up the strait of Magellan, and the next morning we docked in Ushuaia, Argentina at dawn.

We hired a taxi for several hours to take us to some sights in the area, including an excursion through Tierra del Fuego national park.
At the end of the road, at least in Argentina. Here we are 17,848 Km from Alaska. The Chilean side extends further south, but wasn't accessible from here.

Walking in the park, we came across the southern-most railway in the world, built by convict labor in the 1800s.

We window-shopped in the quaint town of Ushuaia, and had some of the best hot chocolate in the world. I think they use real chocolate, because it was very rich!

Back at the harbor, we board our ship, which was sharing the pier with smaller Russian research vessels headed for Antarctica, carrying cash-paying tourists to underwrite the voyage.

We spend a beautiful afternoon sailing northwest up the Beagle Channel, named after Charles Darwin's ship HMS Beagle when he travelled this way more than a century earlier.
We passed snowy peaks and glaciers on each side of the channel.

My wife and I decided to celebrate our upcoming wedding anniversary by splurging on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity the next day to make a landing in Antarctica, offered by Norwegian Cruise Lines. We went to the shore excursion desk to sign up, and used all of our extra savings and the money we had remaining in our special trip bank account to pay for the trip.

The shore excursion managers made us sign lots of waivers and gave us our own souvenir polar jackets to use.

That evening we enjoyed tapas appetizers,

and enjoyed the Indian section of the dinner buffet.



In the evening we got to the show early and got front row seats to some spectacle I can hardly remember now. We went to bed early and set our alarm clocks.