FIN DEL MUNDO

The last day on our own in BA was a down day for Steve, who had a travel bug, and ended up sleeping and giving his stomach a rest. I teamed up with Ulricka, from Germany, and we walked all over the city. We went to the BA Opera House and took a guided tour of one of the four most acoustically perfect opera houses in the world. It WAS quite fabulous. We had some funny adventures that afternoon and all of us ended up in the hotel bar that night for more wonderful Argentine wine and snacks and an early bed time. We go up about 4:00am to start the travel to Ushuaia, the southern most city in the world, and we are here now, a d leaving this evening on a ship for Tierra del Fuego.
After one of the strangest flts ever on a government owned airline, we landed in remote and wind swept Ushuaia. I was pretty surprised to find out almost 70,000 people live around here, and of course, it is the departure spot for anyone going to Antarctica. We were bundled in fleece and polar tech as we got off the plane and finally made it to our really wonderful hotel,perched high, high on a mountain side over looking the Beagle Strait and Chile. We are literally at the end of the Andes Mt. range....and the "end of the world".
We all were so hungry and grabbed a quick lunch in the hotel bar. I ordered a chicken baguette, and was brought a lamb sandwich, and I decided to just "eat it anyway". I ate the best lamb I have ever ever eaten anywhere including New Zealand, Turkey, or Egypt. I found out later that Patagonian lamb is a delicacy not to be missed because of the pampas grass they eat. Believe me, it was a wonderful mistake. Our group went on a tour of the very desolate and historical Ushuaia prison of old, and then Steve and I went walking through, and about 6 pm decided to go on a hike up the Mt behind our hotel! It is light here so long now that we had about 4 hrs left so we found a trail through some woods and off we went. Long and varied activities this day.