March 5 - To Ushuaia, and the Cruise Begins

After a little more than a week in Argentina, the great Antarctic Adventure finally begins.  It was an early morning, with buses leaving for the airport at staggered times starting at 6:00 am.  Luggage was picked up from outside our rooms after 10:00 pm last night, so we only had to deal with carry-ons today.  Somehow Jim and Neil Ann were on the 6:10 bus and I managed to draw the final one at 7:00, so I got an extra hour of sleep.  The hotel kindly set up coffee and pastries for the early departures, and we all got to the airport without any apparent problems.  Ponant had chartered an entire 737 for us, leaving at 9:40 am and landing in Ushuaia about 3-1/2 hours later.  

Leaving sunny Buenos Aires, we arrived in Tierra del Fuego in a steady drizzle and about 45 degrees.  From the airport, we were taken to a restaurant in the mountains about 30 minutes outside of the city, for a traditional (or so they said) lamb and potato lunch.  Whatever, it was good.  Along the way we learned about the history of Ushuaia, and got just a small sense of the scale of the truly rugged mountains surrounding the City.  It must be really magnificent in sunny weather, but today we could see the snow-covered summits only intermittently in the low cloud.  Apparently, there's great skiing, and especially cross-country skiing, in the winter here.  It's a gritty-looking city, but there are 80,000 people living here, in the southernmost city in the world - Fin de Mundo, as the sign says.

From there, back to the port and boarding the ship.   We were the last group to leave the restaurant, and the boarding went smoothly with no waits.  Passports, medical declarations, COVID vaccination records were checked & COVID test results from yesterday were logged in.  They keep our passports for the duration of the trip, and we get them back at the end, so it's kind of nice not to have to worry about that.  In fact, I've put my wallet in the cabin safe and don't expect to need it for the next 15 days!

Kind of hard to get a photo of the ship from
the rain-smeared windows of the bus, but
L'Austral is the smallest one in the front, left.

Bags were waiting in the cabin, and I spent an hour or so unpacking and trying to arrange things.  There's plenty of storage, and I'm in a handicapped-accessible cabin so it's pretty roomy, especially the bathroom.  Next there was a mandatory briefing in the theater, from the captain & cruise director (each speaking both in French and English, this being a French cruise line everything is bilingual), followed by lifejacket and lifeboat drill.  At 8:00  p.m. exactly the ship pulled away from the pier, and we had a light dinner at the buffet, although the very elegant restaurant on the 2nd deck was tempting too.  

At the moment, we're sailing down the Beagle Channel, and should emerge into the Drake Passage around 1 or 2 am.  The captain seemed to think that the weather would cooperate the next couple of days, delivering the "Drake Lake," insead of the dreaded "Drake Shake," but maybe he says that on all the cruises.  

Tomorrow is supposed to be a very busy day, with a bunch of requried briefings, and we get fitted for our parkas and boots for going ashore.

Sailing away from Ushuaia

While we do seem to have a wifi connection at the moment, I'm going to try and get this post up, but it sounds doubtful that the internet connection will be robust enough for me to get one through every day as I've been able to do so far.  Since this is as much a personal trip diary for myself as anything else, I hope to compose the posts regularly, while things are fresh in my mind, and even if I can't upload them right away I'll get them up when I can.

So, I should wake up tomorrow in the Drake Passage, finally on my way to Antarctica!  Exact tracking of the ship's location here.