Ushuaia Tours

Before we set off for Antarctica we have gotten in two tours. Yesterday we took a boat excursion in the Beagle Channel, mostly viewing wildlife. And today we toured the Tierra del Fuego National Park. Unfortunately we were not blessed with great weather on either day, but that is typical of this area. Weather was overcast with temperatures in the high forties.

Albatross

First a little geography for those who may not be intimately familiar with the lay of the land. The Beagle Channel cuts across the southern tip of South America from East to West. Ushuaia lies on the northern shore about midway. The Southern shore is in Chile. The border is in the middle of the channel. Our boat trip undoubtedly passed into Chile. The Channel is south of the Straits of Magellan which also pass all the way across the tip of the continent. The Channel is named for HMS Beagle which was the ship from which Charles Darwin famously made his discoveries. He spent a couple of years here. Both Linda and I had read up on his voyage before coming here.

Humpback whale

Our boat tour took us past cormorant colonies (they look a lot like penguins), lots of seals, and an island frequented by lots of penguins of different varieties. We were also lucky enough to encounter two humpback whales along the way. The tour was about six hours and at the halfway point went to a ranch established by some early settlers. Some passengers got off and returned by bus. We remained aboard and returned on the boat.

That was yesterday. Today we took a bus tour of the National Park. The scenery is beautiful, but the clouds obscured the peaks which surround the area, taking an edge off the beauty. The park is between the Beagle Channel and some beautiful lakes. One highlight is the southernmost post office. We would have mailed some post cards from there, but we neglected to bring any addresses along with us.  A bit further down the road from there you come to the very end of the road which is the terminus of the Pan American Highway which extends from Alaska all the way down to here. Check out the picture of Linda at the sign.

Steam train in park

Lake in the National Park

End of the Pan American Highway

Over all we have been struck with how similar the waters and surroundings look to good old Washington State or perhaps even more so with coastal Alaska. There is kelp in the sea, the mountains descend to the waters edge, there is a cool grey climate. Just like home.

At the end of the tour we went into town and had a large traditional Argentine lunch.  It was an all you can eat barbecue. You see many Argentine restaurants doing this. They have large charcoal fires going in the windows with whole sides of lamb and other meats on grills. You go up to the grill guy (I'm sure there is a better name for him) and tell him what kind of meat you want and he takes a massive cleaver and chops off a few slabs of meat for you. The lamb was excellent. The rest of your plate was from a typical buffet for which we were grateful.  Argentines are not big on vegetables in most restaurants they are not even offered. The buffet had some so we had our first green vegetables in over a week.

Argentine barbecue

Tomorrow we shift to a different hotel. Our Antarctic cruise starts with one hotel night before we go. It's included so we will move. Our B&B is pretty basic but meets most of our needs.

Medical Adventures

Flowers everywhere in Ushuaia especially lupines

OK, time to catch you all up on my medical adventures.

Ever since Cuzco and its high altitude, my heart has not been cooperating. Lots of beats per minute and irregular. I didn't feel particularly bad, but it did sap my energy, going up hill or stairs was apt to leave me short of breath, a particular problem at high altitude. But I felt fine. As you know I got treated for high blood pressure in the Galapagos Islands. the treatment was effective against the high blood pressure and puffy feet and it was hoped the heart beat would also cure itself. Sadly, it did not. Next we had to find a slow spot in our itinerary where we could see a doctor again and figure out what was going on. Turns out that didn't happen until we got to Ushuaia.

Temps are sometimes in the 30's and 40's but the flowers don't mind

On our second day here we traipsed down to the local hospital to see what they would say. After about an hour of waiting I got to see a doctor, who fortunately was a pretty good English speaker. After hearing my story he ordered an EKG, which showed I was experiencing either atrial fibrillation or atrial flutter, both of which I had already looked up. Unfortunately, much to my surprise he didn't give me some pills and send me on my way. Instead, they admitted me immediately. He said I might have to remain about four or five days. That would cause us to miss our Antarctic departure and incidentally the most expensive part of our trip with no possibility of any refund. I was not happy. Turns out that was a worse case scenario. The concern is that when you convert the fibrillation to a normal rhythm there may have been blood clots formed that would then be flushed into the brain resulting in a stroke. Not a result I would welcome.

Captain Fitzroy of the Beagle, the ship Darwin sailed on (and me)

So the first step was to do an echocardiogram to look for clots, which I would have the following morning. To get the best resolution this has to be done through the trachea. Like I had to swallow the transducer. Diane probably knows all about this. The echo guy was an MD who had trained at Mount Sinai in New York. Nice guy his minimal English matched well with my minimal Spanish. Together we spoke about half a common language. Getting that thing down my throat was no fun at all but the good news was, no clots were found. So about an hour later they rolled in a defibrillator, put me out and shocked my heart back into behaving itself. By that afternoon they were ready to let me leave.

While all this was a pain for me, Linda was the one who really suffered. Throughout our explorations of the Spanish speaking world we got by with my gradually increasing Spanish skills. Linda was pretty much limited to gracias, por favor, and bano (can't get this thing to make a tilde). When they wheeled me in to the intensive care unit she was left standing in the hall with my clothes and wondering what to do next. An hour or so later someone did talk to her and she was allowed to talk to me, but then she was on her own to negotiate a taxi back to our B&B as well as to find dinner for herself and then find her way back to the hospital, find the proper entrance, and let them know what she wanted. Almost no one spoke English. Fortunately the innkeeper and his wife at our B&B drove her back to the hospital that evening and helped her find where they were keeping me (very restrictive visiting hours).  AS for me I worried more about her than about my upcoming procedures.

Beautiful downtown Ushuaia

A word about the hospital and Argentine medical care. The hospital is incredibly shabby, floors and walls are dinged up, blankets and bedding are shabby. Waiting areas are non existent (Linda sat on the floor). When we checked in no one spoke English, but I think I had made myself understood, but after an hour of waiting I was having my doubts. Argentines present their ID cards to get service. I presented my passport and since I was a foreigner, paid a fee of 250 Pesos (about $30 US). Once I spoke to the doctor he was very competent. The nursing staff was cordial and as helpful as could be considering the language barrier. So even though the place looked like hell, they were getting the job done. By the time I left the place, I had had an EKG, two echo cardiograms, IV drip for my whole time there,  general anesthesia and defibrillation and a bag full of medicine to take to Antarctica. Also instructions to check back with them after our return. All this for $30.

Tomorrow we will take a boat excursion in the Beagle Channel. Shouldn't be too stressful and will give a chance to relax some more. I've had enough excitement.

view over rooftops from our hotel's courtyard

Buenos Aires -- Yesterday we took a tour of the city on a double decker bus. We took the subway to the central part of downtown to pick up the tour. The subway was quite busy, but nice.  Bus tours aren't my favorite thing, but they are a quick way to get an overview of a city. The opportunities to take decent photographs are also pretty limited, bouncy bus, shooting over or under the surrounding bars. Occasionally you get lucky.

Buenos Aires is in many ways a beautiful city. The colonial architecture is stunning. The various ethnic neighborhoods are fascinating. Sadly, however, large portions of the city are not well maintained. The streets are wide and grand, but full of litter debris and dog crap. The buildings are beautiful but almost universally coated with graffiti. The parks are huge and expansive and unlike other public areas are well maintained. I'm sure many reasons for the look of decay are political, but I also think there is a cultural element. A unique aspect of Spanish architecture is the way that buildings are turned inward outsides do not seem to matter much. A very shabby exterior can conceal a very grand and expansive interior, perhaps opening to an inner courtyard. The only distinguishing feature of most exteriors is a very fine wooden door with brass hardware.

only looks like the Washington Monument

On neighborhood that got started by poor immigrants features houses with corrugated metal siding that the
occupants have painted with a variety of bright colors.

from the tour bus

Argentinians love to eat out. Every corner has a restaurant. The food is generally good and cheaper than in the US. Sometimes we are not sure what we are ordering but the surprise is half the fun.

Tomorrow we get on the plane and head to Ushuaia, the furthest south city in the world. We will have a week in a B&B and then will start our antarctic cruise.

Time to catch up on Argentina. We flew in from Lima, Peru and took a cab to our hotel. Our hotel is small with only about ten rooms. It is not particularly centrally located in Buenos Aires, but it came highly recommended by Trip Advisor. We spent two days catching up on sleep and checking out the area around our hotel. Buenos Aires has lots of beautiful colonial era buildings, but sadly may are badly defaced with graffiti. The spanish style is to have buildings directed inward, often the only distinguishing feature of a building will be its front door, yet inside there may be a beautiful mansion. Our hotel was an old mansion that was converted to a hotel. the staff is very helpful.

Our next step was air excursion to Iguazu Falls. We took a bus from the center of Buenos Aires as part of a tour. The tour was pretty loosely organized. We were given bus tickets and not much in the way of instructions. The bus is beautiful, double decker, reclining seats, meals served aboard (kind of crappy meals). The trip is about 18 hrs. We arrive in Iguazu without a clue what to do next, we are supposed to have transfers to our hotel, but no idea how to do that. We stopped at a tourist info booth and the man there was kind enough to make a few calls and in about fifteen minutes a driver appeared. That's when Linda realized she had left her purse aboard the bus, which was now gone. We were eventually able to let our driver, who spoke no English, know what had happened with the help of the gentleman in the info booth. We chased down the bus to the place it was being refueled. We found Linda's purse, but later discovered that there was no longer any money in it. Possibly $200.

We got to our hotel for some well deserved rest. The next morning we were picked up by our guide  for our tour of Iguazu Falls. The tour was great the falls were awesome. We debated whether to take the optional boat trip to the base of the falls but finally decided to do so. The boat excursion was amazing, affording some great vies of the falls. Unfortunately much of the trip was too wet to take pictures. We were both soaked to the bone, but it was hot so the water was welcome. Fantastic trip.

Tomorrow it is back on the bus and back to Buenos Aires.

We have a nice hotel in the Mira Flores district of Lima. Yesterday was mostly devoted to resting after a fun night sitting up in an airport lobby in Guayaquil. We did manage to get out and buy a new suitcase for Linda. Her Coleman rolling duffle self destructed after only couple of flights, multiple tears and a major seam opening up. We had it wrapped in plastic for our last flight, but it was done fer'.  The Coleman name doesn't mean diddly squat, don't ever buy one.

Mirabus Lima City Tour

Today we took a bus tour of the city and I snapped a bunch of pics from the upper deck. It does not make for great photography, but no doubt the pictures will help our failing memories to actually recall what we have seen. Lima is a huge city of ten million, one third the population of Peru.

One of many parks an plazas in the city

We had dinner at a nice little sidewalk cafe not far from our hotel. Pisco sours are the national Peruvian drink so we celebrated our last night here with two. Tomorrow morning it is back to the airport for the flight to Buenos Aires. Traffic is horrid in Lima and the trip to the airport takes about an hour.

Marine Iguana

I will try to fill in some details about our boat excursion through the Galapagos. Our fellow passengers were a varied lot and all younger than us. There was a young couple from Holland, another young couple from Spain (he works in Ireland), a girl traveling alone from New Zealand, a young man also traveling alone from Israel and a family from Belgium (mother, father, daughter in her twenties). All spoke English to one degree or another. Juan our tour guide was Spanish speaking but did well enough to be understood in English. The Belgians were French speaking and a little weak in English, the Israeli was also weak in English but did better in Spanish. Somehow we all made it work. The rest of the Encantada crew spoke Spanish with very little English.

Marine Iguanas

The wildlife on the islands has no fear whatsoever of human beings. We literally had to tiptoe through the iguanas on a number of occasions. Sea lions make themselves at home anywhere, benches lounge chairs, boats, etc. Tortoises will tolerate your presence, but if you persist they will turn their back on you, they are old and remember the times when it wasn't safe to be a tortoise. The islands are totally free of trash, though we did see some minor incidences of graffiti on cacti. I hope it wasn't a stupid American.

Crabs, Marine Iguanas

The landscape on most of the islands is very volcanic and looks a lot like the lava beds in northern California or the lava fields in Hawaii. There have been eruptions within the last ten years with lava flowing to the sea. Some of the beaches are very beautiful. We swam off a black sand beach and off a red sand beach. The red sand beach was kind of gravelly and hard on the feet.

Penguin

In our tour through the islands we crossed the equator twice. Most of our traveling was done at night as is so often the case with larger cruise ships. This enabled us to have maximum time on each new island. I think our captain was a vampire.

Returning to the beach as sea lion supervises

The weather has been very good. This is supposed to be the rainy season and we did have rain on our first day and a little on the second, otherwise it has been dry with temperatures in the mid eighties, moderated by a nearly constant sea breeze. Water temperatures are a little less than you would expect at the equator due to the influence of the Humboldt Current from Antarctica, hence the penguins. Lots of folks went snorkeling and wore partial wetsuits. When Linda and I went in the temps were in the mid 70's which was fine with us.

Watching manta rays jump around sunset

Ever since Machu Picchu I have been dealing with some issues with high blood pressure, which is not usually a problem for me. It has sapped my energy and caused my feet to swell considerably. Now that our boat ride is over we are spending two nights at a resort on Santa Cruz Island and they were able to get a doctor to check me out. He prescribed some medicine to lower my bloodpressure and a diuretic to deal with the swelling. I am peeing lots and starting to feel better.

Volcanic landscape

Tomorrow we get back on the big bird and head for two days in Lima Peru. We have some truly horrid connections and so will be spending lots of time on airport benches. After that it is on to Buenos Aires.

Linda and I an nine others aboard with a crew of five

It is difficult to know how to begin. We have spent the past five days on a boat exploring the Galapagos Islands. The islands and our voyage have exceeded our expectations in every way.

Our typical daily routine for the trip was this: breakfast at seven, an excursion ashore in the morning on one of several islands led by our guide Juan, back on board, lunch, snorkeling (we didn't snorkel because we are still finishing up our colds), shore excursion at a new location, dinner at seven.

Rather than trying to give you a blow by blow description let me just show you some pictures. the wildlife has no fear of man. We are instructed to stay back one meter, which is pretty close. Many times we have and to literally step over the various animals.

A partial list of animals seen: Galapagos tortoises, sea turtles, marine iguanas, darwin finches, flamingoes, Galapagos hawks, owls, sea lions, fur seals, penguins, herons, frigate birds, boobys

flamingoes

Galapagos tortoise

blue footed booby

Pelican

Lots of marine iguanas

two day old baby fur seal

Lots of colorful red crabs

marine turtle

Gardens behind our hotel

Our room Sea Hawk central for the Super Bowl

Today we tried to see a little bit of Quito, the hotel got us a young man to drive us about for about four hours to catch some of the high lights of the city. It was fun to discuss with him the differences between the US and Ecuador, costs of things, etc. We are very wealthy to him, though he seems to be doing well for himself. A teacher here would make around $10,000 a year. Automobiles seem to cost about 20% to 50% more than in the US. Gas is about $2.00 gal. They use US currency. We took a cable car to the top of a nearby mountain about 12,500 feet. It was a bit hazy, so we couldn't see too much. Then we drove around to various historic buildings. They have a cathedral here that is patterned after Notre Dame in Paris, complete with gargoyles. Amazing what they could build up here in the mountains hundreds of years ago.

Tomorrow we head for the Galapagos Islands where we probably will be out of touch for about a week … we'll see.

Quito in the valley at 9600 ft

Quito cathedral

Hello all! This blog will be to get us caught up a bit. We last wrote from Machu Picchu so I will pick up there.

We took the Hiram Bingham train back to Cuzco. The trip was a mirror image of the trip out except it was dark. We returned to the Hotel Monasterio around 11:00, our new room was up two flights of stairs which I apparently took too quickly because after we got to the top I passed out, scaring Linda and the hotel guy half to death. They gave me some oxygen and I was good to go in a few minutes. I'm pretty sure my previous heart trouble doesn't like 11, 000 foot altitudes. Tomorrow we head for Quito Ecuador.

We check out of the hotel a little after noon and taxi to the airport. Flight from Cuzco to Lima. about four hour layover in Lima. Ugh! Flight to Quito, arrive 1:00 AM. Our hotel in Quito was supposed to pick us up but our flight was a little early so we had to wait a bit. The Quito airport is new and quite a ways out of town, about a 45 minute drive. Cost us $70. Ecuador uses US currency. Quito is at a lower altitude, "only" about 9600 feet.

Our hotel --Mansion del Angel

Park Sunday afternoon

selfie of Sea Hawks fans in Quito

Our hotel in Quito is an old mansion converted to a "small" hotel. It is off season, I think only two other rooms are occupied. The staff is extremely helpful. $150 a night buys a lot of luxury in Ecuador.

Superbowl Sunday! We could get the game on the room's TV but the coverage was all in Spanish. During the game Linda was texting back and forth with Cara and Jeff as they watched the game at Cara's house. We ordered dinner via room service so we wouldn't miss the game. Three course meal, soup, chicken risotto, baked apple and ice-cream for desert. We were both dressed in our Seahawks shirts. Great game! Go Hawks!

Today we are going to take a short tour of the city and tomorrow we fly out to the Galapagos Islands.

BTW -- all the pics on this blog were taken by my cell phone, the hotel recommended that I not flash an expensive camera around town.

Also, Lorraine H. --  Linda says for you to check your home email.