15th February 2017 Antarctica - The Journey Begins

15^th February  2017 Farewell to Ushuaia, The Most Southerly Town on Earth.

Regrettably up bright and early today as the ship needed to collect our luggage to get it loaded despite the ship not sailing until 4.00pm.

When you are at the end of the earth, there are not many options for killing time so we went back into downtown Ushuaia, essentially one long street, to have a last look round before we had to board our ship, the Akademik Ioffe.  Made some last minute weather proof purchases, although here, there seems to be little else to buy than toy or model penguins and “end of the world” tee shirts.

We ended at the docks to see our ship and at the dock entrance, to get to it, you had to pass a hand painted sign saying   “El Amarre De Los Buques Pirates Ingleses”.  Our Spanish was not good but we think they were obviously congratulating the English on the success in the Falklands campaign….or something like that!

The end of the world

Finally, there was the Akademik Ioffee, Iooking very big, very blocky, very white and decidedly Russian. This was originally a Russian Antarctic survey ship and the company is still actively involved with Antarctic research. It runs about 18 trips a year to the Antarctic only, plus others to the Antarctic and other islands like South Georgia and the Falklands.

We were both unusually nervous, this was taking us outside our comfort zone.

Akademik Ioffe (right) - our temporary home for 10 days

Soon 4pm came round and we went to the check-in location where we met for the first time the other 94 passengers. Janette spent the time working out that there were definitely several people older and less agile than her!  We were then all checked in, our passports removed and taken by bus to the ship, some 300 yards only…well it’s a small town!  Whilst there were 94 passengers, there were over 70 crew.

When we got to the dockside gang-plank, we were full of excitement along with a distinct dose of fear and trepidation as we learnt that the trip that had just come back had gone through a severe storm on the Drakes Passage with 30ft waves demolishing the entire bar and bar glasses which was not what Janette wanted to hear.

Once on board we immediately went up to the top deck to watch us cast off and head down the Beagle Channel leaving Ushuaia behind us. Last land we’ll see for 1000km until we reach the Antarctic.  We left the last town on earth and now we were on our way to the least visited, hostile environment but the most spectacular place on earth.

Bye Bye World - Nice knowing you

Once underway we settled into our cosy little cabin (bathroom like a caravan where you can shower whilst sitting on the toilet) and unpacked (first time in 10 days). Just thinking about making some tea when a voice invaded our room. This was Canadian Boris on the tannoy, our expedition leader bringing us all down for a briefing.

Once they’d explained what we needed to know for the next few days, it was time for dinner.  The dining room is the only place all passengers can fit into and while it is a bit like school dinners, it’s a great way to get to know the other passengers and we made friends with many nationalities but in the end stuck with a couple from Australia.

Not many Brits, lots of Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders. Our first dinner was spent talking to a polar marine mammals PHD scientist who is on board with 2 colleagues from Australia to track and biopsy whales. Just fascinating and there were many scientists.  We just hoped that we were not going to be asked to harpoon a tag to a whale.

It now seems as though the company we are travelling with, take a lot of scientists, explorers, mountaineers and specialists of one sort or another.

Later, and now at the start of the Drakes Passage, in what they were calling calm weather, we realised what the trip was going to be like as by 8.00pm and before we had ever got to the bar, we had probably collided with every wall and passenger on the ship and 94 people were all wobbling and holding onto the walls as the boat rocked from side to side and front to back.  We have no internet or no phone in this part of the world, weather forecasts are notoriously unreliable (irrelevant) so we decided to just go with the flow.

Testing the Foul Weather Gear...and sweating

A quick night cap then off to bed. The rock and roll of the ship was just bearable and after washing but trying hard not to fall into the toilet, we fell asleep being gently rocked although clearly many had already fallen victim to sea sickness and people were starting to sport patches behind their ears. We were warned however not to be lulled into a false sense of security as we now have over 2 full days at sea crossing the notoriously rough Drakes Passage

Monday 13th Tuesday 14th February - Iguazu to Ushuaia (End of the World)

Monday 13th Tuesday 14th February - Iguazu to Ushuaia (End of the World)

Monday 13th
After 2 days being fried poached and stir fried in the Amazonian Rain Forest, the lure of the cold of the south was calling.  Unfortunately, we both had been affected by an alien force field that passed over the hotel in the night.
We woke up only to discover that both of our watches had stopped at exactly the same time, 6.20am.  Janette's equally implausible theory that humidity had entered our travel watches at the same time was derided but soon it became clear that in error, Steve had set his alarm to UK time and as result, we lost 3 hours sleep.  There were retributions.

So after a very very leisurely breakfast , we set off to the airport for our 2 leg flight to the end of the world, Ushuaia and eventually on the the Antarctic.
After the customary delays getting Steve's  new metal hip and camera gear through the scanners, we were off.

When we flew up, the lunch was cancelled do to severe turbulence on the flight but we later learnt that in fact that Aerolineas Argentina (the airline) had stopped doing food altogether and with that news, we had re-written the famous song Don't Cry for me Argentina to.....
"Don't fly with me Aerolinas,
The truth is, we'll never feed you
Not on the short flights, not on the long flights   etc etc".

We met an American on our flight whose grandfather discovered a mountain on Antarctica and bought back a stuffed penguin that he had hit on the head with an ice axe but was now a family heirloom....funny, the people we get to talk to on our travels!

So, after a further 6  hours of flying, we were on the decent to the end of the world and there can be few descents as spectacular in the world - straight up the Beagle channel and below line of the Andes mountains.

Collected by the guide and deposited at our hotel, we were treated to something that never happens here - 17 degrees and bright blue sky.
As we were unable to dry our clothes and shoes from yesterday, they came with us on our two leg flight but obviously they needed to be re-washed.  Now, here is the winning tip given to us by our last guide and everybody does in in the rain forest.  Dry your clothes behind the fridge!!.  The net result of this peach of wisdom was that we had Janette's soggy trainers and all of Steve underwear down the back of the hotel fridge.

Ushuaia the last town at the end of the world...it says so in all of the shops

.
Now, as we had had an odd start, we didn't realise that is was almost 8.00pm so we shot out to explore the town. Here as were are not quite south enough, there is 18 hours of daylight and when we say daylight, we mean so bright that dense sunglasses are required.]

When it finally gets dark, the moon is so 
bright that is is as bright as the town lights.




Temperature at night is still holding up well at a balmy 10 degrees so once again we had got completely wrong our dress requirement
.

So, in the face of adversity and research and especially as most of the shops were now closed, we went to the southernmost pub in the world for a few Beagle Beers. Steve was demonstrating his disappearing beer act in jig time as did Janette who took a liking to this local brew.




Steve below in his spiritual home...

Now, a little lesson on this place !!
Originally, this place was occupied by a tribe who could survive in sub zero temperatures with no clothes just relying on the natural oils that the body produced. 
An British Missionary took a few home (as you do) to study them but one died and the government ensured their return by which time, the missionaries and Natives were getting married etc etc.

Later, after all of the tribes were wiped out by disease that the missionaries had brought with then, the town became a prison which only closed in 1920.  Now only really tourism survives but you can still buy a prison uniform for the kids which is probably more meaningful to Argentinians who visit here....here endeth the lesson.

Tuesday 14th
Steve did remember it was Valentines day so he is in the good books !!

 
Odd things for sale in the luxury shopping mall
We had decided to visit the "newish" indoor shopping mall for an hour for our last minute waterproof and wind proof acquisitions but this all proved futile and the whole place just sold off stuff which for us was of no real use.

We did find a  supermarket that we could stock up for our long boat trip to Antarctica.
In case we were stranded with little hope of survival, we bought two bottles of Argentinian bubbles that we had discovered and had developed a taste for and chocolate and crisps.  We wont be too miserable.

Obviously, all Argentinian children go to school to train to be Pharmacists - the school uniform section.

When packing your gift for shipping, the Post Office provided armed security.... obviously to enhance your customer shopping experience !!

The Post Office - pretty interesting outside and in - Janette was 45 minutes queuing for a stamp. Hope her Mum appreciates the postcard !

Downtown Ushuaia - more North Face, Columbia, Wolfskin shops than anywhere...plus model penguins everywhere

Steve - obviously pondering on sunken Argentinian
 ships fought hard not to say anything

Janette can spot shellfish to eat at 50 paces and she was positively drooling at the sight of the King Crab.
This is a close relative of the one she had for dinner last night !!

View from the Hotel Window in case anyone thinks we were lying about the weather !!

Sunday 12th February - Iguazu Argentina...Even Wetter

12th February 2017 - Iguazu Argentine

The idea of the whole Iguazu experience is to see it from both the Brazilian and Argentinian side.

If yesterday blew our socks off, then the hike today would be probably unsurpassed by anything we would do....probably ever.  

Our guide Nieve and driver (Super) Mario, collected us early for a full day of walking in the Argentine Iguazu National Park.
Steve had decided that instead of getting wet through fully clothed with waterproofs, he was just going to wear less and allow himself to get a good and regular soaking.  Janette had also given up on her hair.
Going in the main entrance, the guides drove further in and took us through a short cut & directly down to the lower walk, this meant we had the whole walk to ourselves. 

As she used to work as a ranger before the call of maternity, she knew the route that did not involve mixing with hundreds of South American and Japanese tourists.

  

We don’t know what we expected but it was just one stunning view after another. Each turn

unfolded  into another spectacular view of a different waterfall from the whole range. The scale was just breathtaking. We walked for 5 hours going from one waterfall to the next culminating in the most spectacular view from the middle of the Devil’s Throat the largest of all the falls.
The weather had been unusually kind to us, it was a glorious day with plenty of sunshine and when we looked down into the cauldron of spray at the Devil’s Throat, there was a stunning semi-circular rainbow below us in 
the spray.

Lunch once again was a battle to fight off the Coati - mammal machines that would seriously 
injure for food.









Janette's Video of some of the many falls including Devils Throat at end- "Iguazu in Action" (Title by Spielberg)

Nivee and Janette in deep and meaningful
conversation (not)

Happy and exhilarated we headed back to the little train that would take us back to the entrance to the park to meet our driver.

But…..Iguaza had one last present for us…. The clouds gathered, the heavens opened and the most incredible thunderstorm with torrential rain started. Everyone was drowned. We at least had waterproof jackets with hoods, but most of the others were in little plastic ponchos.

We waded ankle deep out of the park and into the car completely soggy but laughing our heads off. The problem now of course is that at 80% humidity - nothing dries.

The Rainforest certainly lived up to its name, but we had been so lucky for the main views of the day we didn’t mind getting soaked through right at the end.
With wet cloths, soggy camara bag and sore legs, we did the only thing you could in such circumstances - went to the bar....

Tomorrow we begin the next big trip - we fly to Ushaiau to eventually meet our ship to take us to to Antarctica.   Dont think we will have problems with heat and humidity there.

All images for individual days are here South America Image Files

Saturday 11th February - Iguazu Falls, Brazil (and rain)

Saturday 11th Feb - Iguazu Falls, Brazil…Hot and Wet...Very Wet

Today was a bugger.  We had to get up at 5.45am to get to the airport for an early 2 hour flight up to the Amazon rain forest and the Iguazu (pronounced "ee waz u”) falls.  An early start this morning after our late night at the tango club – not such a good idea ......and due to bumpy and long flight on the flight up, we only managed to get a glass of water and no food.

Our flight breakfast to Iguazu went up the wazu !!.

We flew in over miles and miles of pristine rain forest, through the Amazonian storms and into a wet and very hot (27 degrees) forest to be greeted by our smiling guide telling us we were off to Brazil  and not going to the hotel first. Steve wanted to kill her.

Brazilian security was tight and they took
another page of our passports !!

On the recommendation of our guide, we dumped our cases, grabbed our waterproofs and headed off into the Iguazu National Park. We crossed the border into Brazil, got our passports stamped again with more half page stamps and headed down to the stunning views of the Brazilian side of the Iguazu falls.

In truth, Steve had not much reading up on this regions or falls and after 30 minutes walking with full waterproofs and a heavy camera bag was starting to combust internally and had to remove all waterproof clothing as he said he felt like boil in the bag meal.  So, we arrived to heavy rain, a staggering 100% humidity and the temperature was rising by the hour to over 30 degrees.  Steve had worked out that he was wetter inside his waterproofs than without them and Janette had completely given up on her hair.

How do we describe the sheer scale and force of nature we experienced?...well whatever
expectation we had soon went out of the window with the sights we saw.    We went right down to the walkway at Devil’s Throat, the largest and most powerful of the 480 water falls. The noise was deafening and the spray soaked us, us but it was completely exhilarating although at that humidity, we doubted if we would ever dry again.
The river breaks into over 400 waterfalls all between 100m and almost 250m of fall which creates a most thunderous roar and a mist that covers many hundreds of meters.

It was however, so wet that in some ways it was really difficult to photograph without getting all your gear wet.

Video - "Up The Wazu"

Being the Amazon rain forest, our first encounter was with a very large lizard type ugly thing and then cute but aggressive furry animals called Coati (Meaning cold nose - not something we were experiencing today as we dripped with sweat for over 4 hours).

Exhausted by our day’s escapades and late night, early start, a quiet evening in is the order of the day before we tackle the Argentinian side of the same falls tomorrow.  In truth, we were by now both virtually invalided but the exercise, humidity and later, the Mendoza fizz and local beer (which was required for medicinal purposes), seemed to do us good.

All images for individual days are here South America Image Files

Friday 10th February - Buenos Aires (Sadly)

Friday 10th  February - Farewell To Buenos Aires and "The Last Tango in BA"

After roaming round the Buenos Aires sites yesterday, we decided a leisurely planning session over many coffees was the way to start the day. Coffee here is great and we never needed much of excuse to stop and have one especially as our legs were still aching.

Our first port of call today was to the Evita Museum in the old region.  Because we were pretty knackered after yesterdays marathon walk, we decided to have a much more sedentary walk around Buenos Aires which clearly was very capable of eating us alive. The Evita Museum was a house originally owned by a wealthy family who donated it to Eva Peron’s foundation as did many wealthy families across the country. These were used as welfare houses where poor women could come to receive advice, welfare, support with children etc.  (More on Eva Peron back story later)

The exhibition in the museum was interesting, sometimes very moving but as usual here, very hot. It was a good balance of the social justice work done by the Eva Peron foundation, plus movie reel of her famous speeches, clothes and books and the speech given a few days before her death.

On balance, understanding more of the pro’s (workers rights, welfare, social justice, womens vote, affordable fridges for the poor etc) and the con’s (the disappeared thousands, virtual dictatorship in the later Juan Peron years, allegation of Swiss bank accounts), we think Eva Peron gets our vote, if for nothing else then for championing women’s rights and securing the vote for women especially noting she died at 33 which for most people have not achieved much at all.

It seems like tremendous achievements in such a short space of time given how young she was when she died.

From there we headed back down to San Telmo district with its antique and flea market flavour

although our cases are so stuffed, we would struggle to fit anything more than a beer mat inside. This looked a very interesting area which we hadn’t had much time in yesterday.

The Plaza Dorrego is home to a huge weekend flea market and spontaneous tango events. San Telmo is the home of the tango which started out life as a dance for men with music and no words and evolved into the ultimate couples dance we know now.  Never sure if we would feel the same about it if men only dances the tango.

It also is the home to the artisan shops, so we spent a happy couple of hours wandering around exploring the little artisan businesses.

Buenos Aires has police on every street.
Steve was constantly advised against
 showing his camera

We also had to try another Buenos Aires speciality snack, Empanadas.  These are sold everywhere and being naive tourists and also learning that here, they are the best in Buenos Aires, we ordered one each only to realise that they are 4 inch Cornish pasties without the swede. They were lovely and we were sure the waiter just thought we were on diets.

                             Video from the oldest Tango club in BA (Dont try this at home!!)

As it was Friday night and as in most happening cities it’s the night to go out and sample the nightlife so we headed off to a Milonga (Argentinian dance salon) to watch some proper Tango.  We were recommended to go to Café Los Angelitos which had some of the most professional and adventurous tango, so off we went.

The Tango was fantastic!  Much flicking of legs and dramatic poses by very bendy people, great to watch and a real education – we’re not sure they bend in the same places as we do and there was no way we were going to even try but the Tango was a logical end to our visit to Buenos Aires and tomorrow we are off to Brazil (briefly)

Epic Street Art 

Children's cartoon character, Mafalda, was so popular over 50 years in South America, They now have a big family and turned into a political message family.  Names are Freedom, Inequality etc.There is a model of Mafalda in town on a bench where people can sit and have pictures taken with her, it was non stop all day!!

All images for individual days are here South America Image Files

Thursday 9th February 2017 - Buenos Aires

Thursday 9th February 2017 - Buenos Aires

This morning’s start was a bit sluggish.  We thought we would not be affected by the flight as the time difference was only 3 hours but we were.  After breakfast, we were met by Maria, our larger than life, full on, bouncy guide and mafia look alike driver for what was supposed to be just a 3 hour intro to the city.  As it turned out, they had not realised how slow Steve and Janette travelled and dawdled so their programme was shot from the outset.
It became clear to us that Buenos Aires was in fact a most spectacular city, with extremely friendly and helpful people and more than that, the architecture was varied and on occasion quite breath-taking with mixes of modern, post-war and classical Spanish and French styles. We knew we had not allocated enough time.

For some reason our lift carried a list of famous Argentinian Actresses which oddly included porn stars

A typical cheerful Catholic Church
where everything is going well

A jaunt around Catholic Church of Iglesia Nuestra Senora Del Pilar (catholic church for short) revealed a house of worship seriously not short of gold.
Built in 1732 and the second oldest church in Argentina.  Situated on the northern Plaza Mayo and conveniently situated next to the arguably the most famous graveyard.

Steve does have unusual travel requests and he loves ruins and graveyards.  The cemetery at Recoleta district was number one on his list.  The walk through the Northern Barrio region’s Plaza Mayo to possibly the most interesting cemetery in the world was quite interesting but for the height of the tourist season there seems little going on.



The Recoleta cemetery was a stunning collection of stone mausoleums laid out like a city in a labyrinth of paths. It is for residents of the area of Recoleta although most are rich, powerful and famous. It was originally a site of a cemetery for the poor, but they soon got ousted !  After the 18th century, the rich and famous dead replaced the poor graves and what sprung up over 300 years kept stone mason in business for ever.  Once a rich person had had his mausoleum constructed, his family had entitlement to be buried there and as a result, each mausoleum had many wood coffins behind the doors some of which were glass for all to see.  The perfect start to your day.

Evita

Now, obviously, if you are European, you come to see the Mausoleum of Eva Peron because you had seen the film or play but if you are Argentinian, you will be coming to pay respects to military generals who have shaped the history of the country and sorted out the workers.  More on Eva Peron (Evita) later but suffice to say that she is not actually in the family Mausoleum but buried six feet under the path where everybody stands without realising it.

Argentina has, for most of its history been all about people’s rights and during the period 1870 to 1920s, a group of wealthy business and academic people formed a group called the Generation 80.  This is when Argentina reached out the trade with the world and brought the country great prosperity.  This period was called the Argentinian "belle epoque".  
As a result of this – all the founding members of this group are here still in their coffins.

The coffins of the Generation 80 behind doors

Changes in politics brought about the county’s decline through corruption again and even as late as two years ago, the president was caught with her hands in the till reversing the growth by her late husband.  

A tour around this graveyard and the research of its inhabitants will provide all there is to know about the history of Argentina.


 For some light relief, we jumped in the Mafia car and went to the Teatro Colon or as Steve

called it the Colonoscopy Theatre as he through it was named after an internal organ but apparently named after Christopher Columbus.  The most famous building in Argentina apparently and built in 1908 with passenger lifts and air conditioning remarkably and passage ways under the floor so the sound came through air ducts.  Few people come here and don’t visit this spectacular theatre.  Being an opera house, one American tourist asked what the next event was and we assumed that he didn’t know much as he set off to book tickets for John Williams and a concert of movie themes ...God bless Americans!!

Maredona, Evita and a famous Tango Singer
whose name escapes us

After so much culture, we went to an area La Boca area that was originally the immigrant area, home of the Boca Juniors football team and containing an area called El Caminito (little walkway).  
This area, seemingly miles from anywhere seems to be an odd Argentinian “Camden” with brightly coloured houses, eclectic mix of hand made statues, give shops and tourist tat and called the little Italy of Buenos Aires.  The  origin of the bright colours comes from the olden day use of old ships paint and construction products to build the immigrant houses although it                                                                                 doesn’t say much for the colour of the                                                                                       ships 200 years ago !!

There are obviously quite a lot of references to the other local celebrity
 - The Pope 

Most of the tourists we meet were North 
and South Americans.
We've seen few Europeans

Having dispensed with our guide for the day, we went to the central government assembly building Casa Rosada where Eva Peron famously gave her public speeches from and also allowed Madonna to use it when shooting Evita.  Walking back down the Avenue di Mayo, we had to go “dark” as we shimmied past the Falkland Island protest tent occupied by retired soldiers and already having seen the skull and cross bones on a UK flag, were not inclined to speak English at this point.

One of the most famous coffee shops in the country was next with Café Tortino on Avenue del Mayo.  Like all coffee shops steeped in history, the waiter was old, grumpy and uniformed but we managed to get served eventually.  The famous meeting place for the great and good in Argentina’s history.


The Oldest and most famous coffee shop, Cafe Tortini - Tons of histocal pictures and documents adorn the walls.


On the recommendation of our guide, we went on the see the weirdest book shop we had

ever seen, The Libraria El Ataneo.  Oddly, this was originally a theatre and now, with its royal boxes used as reading rooms, the place is a strange place to buy books but there is probably not much in print that it doesn’t sell. In one of the boxes two older men were reading and we were struck by the similarity to Waldorf & Statler from the Muppets.

You can have a small snack any time here !!

Steve was never one for soccer but with the local team Boco Juniors around the corner, he may have got interested again.
The area where the ground is is definitely not one to walk around .

Downtown Buenos Areas. A huge city and with a population of 8 million.  Very sophisticated, edgy and the people were incredibly friendly towards us sometimes stopping to ask us if we needed help....usually we did.

Crime here is probably not recorded but every day someone told us to hide our cameras etc and quite literally, there were police on every street we walked down, even in remote areas.

The Casa Rosada is the Argentinian parliament building and the left hand balcony is where Evita gave her first speech mobilising the people and announcing that Peron would support the rights of the people.  After she died, Juan Peron reverted to type and became a military dictator.

The only other person to have done a speech here is Madonna for the film Evita where she was given permission.

Once again, Eva Peron is pretty well covered here and this modern art work by a local artist has her time and date of death hidden in her hair which you can see with a camera zoom.





Out of this shot, was the balcony famous for her last speech and immortalised in the words in the play/film "dont cry for me Argentina".  The video of the speech is in the Evita museum and was very moving as many hundreds of thousands of people had turned up to give blood following an appeal to safe her.
Sadly, at only 33 years old, she died from a sexually transmitted disease give to her by Juan Peron who had also killed his previous wife the same way

Obviously, touching the Pope is not the done thing here

With very aching feet and the temperature rising through the afternoon from mid 20s to mid 30s, we went back for an hour chill out. Then it was out for our evening entertainment in trendy Palermo. Steve had to try the latest craze to hit Buenos Aires…craft beer..not Tango!.  He sampled a few local brews including IPA and London Bitter, and then we went and faced our carnivore red meat feast and Malbec wine that Argentina is famous for.  We went to a locally recommended Parrilla for the best steak ever eaten will probably mean we will not be able to eat it in any other country other than South America.

Parillas are really just neighbourhood steak houses and sell red meat by the truck load.

Stuffed full and completely knackered, half drunk, aching and with red meat blood pressure probably approaching 190/90 we were off to bed at 11.00pm just as local people for coming out to eat.  11.00 pm is the locals dinner time.

All images for individual days are here South America Image Files