Ushuaia,Southern most city in the world, a strange place concocted of all manner of different houses obviously with no thought for building regs, health and safety or anything else for that matter. If you can live in it, it will do. Old containers, sheds, big sheds and then poorly constructed brick and concrete etc finally arriving at those who have done well for themselves and reside in chalet style houses. There doesn't seem to be any set areas with this miss mash all together in the same pot. It is a very industrial area with mountains of sea containers stacked all around. It is the main port you catch the large ships and ice breakers for trips to Antartica, at around 5000 dollars for a ten day trip. One of our team, Mikail, took the plunge and got a last minute deal at a reduced rate. He'll catch us up later on.
As for us we chartered a sailing boat ( ten of us) from Tres Maria's, operated by Hector Monsalve, a famous local diver, underwater photographer etc etc and visited some of the protected Islands in the bay to view Yamana Indian Middens, local wildlife including King Cormorants, Sea Lions,and flora.
The Indians that originally inhabited these islands were a hardy lot. They wore no clothes, were small in stature, had large chests and had a different body temperature to us which allowed them to withstand the desperately low temperatures in winter, it's blooming cold enough in summer. The women did the hunting, diving for molluscs and other sea food, whilst the men canoed and carried the burning coals for the fires. The middens are the remains of these fires, normally in sheltered areas, depending on wind direction, which contained shells, animal bones and coals.
It was a relaxing day enabling me to take a few more photographs of wildlife which was amazing. I decided not to take the trip to Antartica as its somewhere I'd love to take Lu in the future. ( a few brownie points earn't there ha ha :)
Now I've been learning on the job so to speak re the blog. Up until now I've only been able to update when I have wifi, and even then you may lose half if you suddenly lose the signal. One of the girls on the expedition is clued up and suggested blogger which allows you to write your blog offline adding photos etc and then publishing as and when you get a signal. The only downside is that you can only add photographs at the end and you can't add comments to the photos and there's a possibility the quality of pictures aren't the same. But it enables you to keep up to date which is a benefit. What I will do is write comments on the pictures in sequence and if the picture quality is not good I will re add the best ones signal providing. Lets give it a go.
1. Me and some of the guys having a cuppa before we set sail.
2. On board the yacht.
3. The mountains surrounding Ushuaia.
4. King Cormorants. This reminded me of Lu giving it bell oil and me doing the usual ha ha.
5. King Cormorants.
6. The colony, some of these nests are a thousand years old.
7. Don't disturb !
8. A youngster.
9. Life is such a bore!
Oh well time to depart, wishing you all well at this busy time of year......it's manic here...Adios
Tony x
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