Today we left for Ushuaia to get on our boat to Antarctica. It was a super long day. I had planned on sleeping until 2:30 am, but my phone rang at 1:57 am, arg! I picked up the phone, but then I hung up and went back to bed. At 2:06am it rang again. Guess I am not going to sleep so I got up, washed my face and went downstairs. Our bags were gather in our Penguin groups and as we got to the bus we had to verify our bag and then they put it on the bus. When we got to the airport at 3:30 am it was packed. Took us over an hour to get checked in. We were not all in the group checking, but the main check in until they finally grabbed a few of us and moved us over to group check in. When we walked through security, there was no pulling out your liquid. Wish would have known that as I would have brought a bottle of water. The flight was 3 hours and 15 minutes. Pretty uneventful which is good. Got there and got our bags and then had to drop off bags going directly to the room. I didn’t grab a jacket and wondered it I might need one. Ended up I didn’t need one. As when we were in the city the sun came out and it was in the 60’s so I was just fine.
We had 4 hours to kill in a very small city. Another traveler and I walked around after stamping our passports with the end of the earth stamps. We walked in some stores and there was a hard rock shop so I got another tee shirt. After walking around, we stopped in a seafood restaurant. I had to use my translation app for the menu, but found an amazing seafood stew and I ate the whole darn thing.
At 2:15 pm we were to be back on the bus to go get our Covid tests. They took us back near the airport to a big gymnasium. There was a group in front of ours finishing up their tests and then waiting for the results. We had to sit in spaced out chairs and hold the tube with our name on it. They would then come by and take the test then you would move to the bleachers where we sat closer to each other waiting for our results. As we were getting our tests, the whole group in front of us passed and they all cheered. Once we were done and waiting for our results, the last group came in. We then got our results and everyone cleared. So another cheer! We did later find out that one person tested positive in the last group. Not sure what happened with the first group. So we were cleared to go to the boat.
There was a big greeting and then someone escorted us to our room. My room is much bigger than I expected. I thought I would have a twin bed, but I am in a king bed with lots of room. The bathroom is also spacious.
Only my carry on was in the room when I got there, so they had to go in search of my other bag. Thankfully they found it. Not much time to unpack as we had to go to the briefings and safety drill. We then were instructed to go to dinner. They are putting us in shifts to try and space things out which is nice. After dinner we headed down to get our jackets. Mine is a little big, but they didn’t have any XS. It is a really nice jacket.
I was pretty tired and needed to unpack so went back to the room. After unpacking and putting on my sea sickness patch. I checked tomorrow’s itinerary and then headed to bed at 10 pm and the sun hasn’t set yet. They said it will not get full dark at night which will be interesting. We also haven’t pulled out of the dock yet which I do feel is a bit odd.
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