Machu Picchu, Cruise around Cape Horn, and Iguassu Falls
Mike and Judy Henderson
January 31 to March 1, 2017
I'm going to leave the map at the beginning of each page to help you visualize where we are.
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2/17/2017 (Friday) Today we arrived in Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world. It was a cold, rainy, overcast day.
We had signed up for the 4X4 Adventure tour, and this is one of the 4X4 vehicles ready to pick us up. The logo on the side says "Never judge a day by the weather." It's an important piece of advice for those in Patagonia, where they say that you can have four seasons in four hours.
We headed out to the Llanos del Castor nature area, and first stopped at this restaurant for a potty break before heading into the woods.
This was the 4X4 that we were in.
The Three Amigos (Stan, Ken and Mike)
Here we are in the 4X4.
We loaded up and headed into the woods on a dirt road. This was the stream crossing. They had prepared the crossing with rocks and gravel, and graded the entrance and exit, so it was easy to cross.
We came to a beaver pond where beavers had built several dams across the stream, creating a series of ponds.
Here's their lodge.
And another, older dam just upstream. Beavers are not native to Tierra del Fuego. They were introduced in the 1940's and have spread all over the island. They have no natural predators and are now considered an invasive species in Tierra del Fuego. The people of Tierra del Fuego do not hunt the beaver because they do not eat the meat and the pelts are not in demand. While they decimate the forest in the area of their ponds, the forest are large and the destruction is local to their ponds. From observation, it looked like they destroy trees in about a 100 yard radius from their pond.
After we left the beaver dam, the road got really bad.
The leading 4X4 got stuck in a mud hole. He bottomed the 4X4 and the wheels did not have any traction. The passengers stayed inside during the rescue operation, and later reported that it was a good way to make new friends. Each vehicle was equipped with winches, and the drivers are very familiar with pulling each other to safety.
Each of the 4X4's have a winch on the front and the 4X4 behind this one hooked up to him and pulled him out.
Eventually, we all made it back to the main road.
From here, we took a walk in the forest. It was raining a fair amount but our jackets proved to be good shelter.
The guide stopped at intervals and talked about the forest. One interesting point that stuck me was that the downed trees did not rot very quickly because of the colder weather. This is summer and it's fairly cool - in summer, the average high is less than 50 degrees F - but most of the time, it's only slightly warmer than a refrigerator. And just as food takes a long time to spoil in a refrigerator, it takes a long time for the wood to decay.
Eventually, we walked to the top of a hill and got a good view of the area, although it was hazy. Those are the beaver ponds in the center-left of the picture.
Here are our friends, Sue and Ken, in matching rain jackets:-)
And Judy and me in the forest.
After the walk we loaded into a minibus to gather at a restaurant where we had a pretty extensive meal - empanadas, sliced meat, cheese, small quiche, wine, and dessert. The tour had advertised it as a "snack" but it was much more.
Judy and I in the restaurant.
Here's a picture of Judy with the driver of our 4X4. He said his name was Facundo, and he knew all the jokes. It really means something like "strong".
He had quite a head of hair, as you can see in the next picture. He said it had been an eleven-year project, and that his savings on haircuts had been spent on shampoo.
Then it was back to the ship. That evening we had dinner with Ken and Sue and the duo that entertained in one of the lounges. They bill themselves as the Stupendous Duo - she sings and he plays the piano. They are a very nice couple from Poland.
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2/18/2017 (Saturday) An "at sea" day. Last night we had very rough seas. There's a storm moving through the area and the ship was rocking and rolling. About midnight, the captain decided it was too rough for us to proceed to the Falkland Islands, where we would have had to tender in to shore, so we turned north and are headed to Puerto Madryn, Argentina.
We played some of the games on board. Here's Judy playing "baggo" where you throw bags at the target and get points depending on whether you can get the bag in the hole. I think the bag that's in the air in this picture was a "ringer".
That evening, we had dinner with Stan and Jacki
We'll arrive at Puerto Madryn on February 20.