Hotel Arakur

I am now sitting with a gin and tonic in the Hotel Arakur, on the mountains above Ushuaia port, looking down to the harbour through the huge picture windows in the lounge.

I chose my room to have a valley view rather than a sea view, because I hunkered after some greenery. However, the first room I was shown to overlooked the carpark!  Management then kindly showed me to another room higher up, better views over to the valley, with good views of the nothofagus forest, since I was going to be staying 7 nights! In hindsight, next time I will choose the sea view, as it is hard to not get the carpark if one chooses a "valley view" room, which is a bit cheaper.

The hotel itself is very new, only 3 years old, and is still a work in progress.  It is all wood and stone, with copper-clad roof and sides which have already weathered to a beautiful verdigris green.

My room has wooden floors, auto curtains, and a bath with a picture window looking into the bedroom and beyond to the view outside the My room has wooden floors, auto curtains, and a bath with a picture window looking into the bedroom and beyond to the view outside the window. 

A very lovely place to chill out for a few days!

Back in Ushuaia Day 1

It is only a 3.5 hour flight from Buenos Aires down to Ushuaia - I left BA in the rain, and arrived in Ushuaia in the sunshine and warmth!  It is the warmest I have ever felt - 20C!! Usually the temperature has been in single digits, even with a minus!!

The cloud formations down in this part of the world are unlike anywhere else, particularly down in Antarctica. For the most part. flying down to Ushuaia is over water, and at the last minute the flight path crosses over onto the southern part of Tierra del Fuego, to land on an air strip that has clearly been built out into the water!  I guess there were not too many straight stretches of existing land on which to build a runway - it is pretty mountainous around here!

It has felt really good to be back in Ushuaia, knowing that there is another fabulous food-for-the-soul trip to Antarctica in the offing!

The Geological Bathroom

My bathroom has stylolites on the walls and floor!  I haven't seen or even thought about stylolites since Uni days and the Carbonate field trip up to Shark Bay!

Stylolites are localised irregular dissolution surfaces caused by pressure solution* in sedimentary rocks; they are common in carbonate rocks (eg limestones), where they are often parallel to bedding. Usually stylolites have a characteristic saw-tooth (suture-like) morphology, which is thought to have resulted from differential chemical solution by groundwater circulating through semiconsolidated or consolidated, hardened rock under pressure; they are associated with the accumulation of insoluble materials such as organics or iron oxides. 

*Pressure solution is a process by which dissolution of minerals occurs at grain-grain contacts under high stress in an aqueous solution. The dissolved components can be either removed from the rock or deposited in a low stress area of the rock.

The vanity top and picture rails along the top of the stylolite tiles on the walls in the main bathroom and shower room are sourced from a dark green to black hornblende and amphibolite-rich granite, with large phenocrysts of green feldspar, possibly microcline.

Time out at the Hilton Buenos Aires

I am on the 7th floor in the Hilton Buenos Aires, which is in the trendy Puerto Madero part of town.  I really only decided to stay here because I am a Hilton Honors member, and that tends to give you a couple of perks, like free WiFi and a high floor in the hotel.  I am on the same floor as the gym, spa and outdoor heated pool.

OK, to be honest, while everything is very comfortable, this hotel is looking a little weary, even to the extent of missing tiles in the pool! However, you get a great view across the river and across to the Atlantic Ocean, so there are balances.

The bathroom is spacious, but again a bit dated.  A bit more on the geological aspect of the bathroom later on!

Breakfast is pretty special, and I haven't really felt the need for any other big meals, just snacks.  A good early dose of Cafe con leche, scrambled eggs, bacon, and one teeny tiny pastry, and that has been lasting me pretty much all day.

I have only managed to get one session of pool therapy for my knee here, and have not yet ventured out due to sore knee, but today is my last chance before I head down to Ushuaia tomorrow, so plan to wander about  some later this afternoon and early evening.

It has been a good chill out for me, and just what I needed to kick start the adventure.

The Shortest Way Around the World

Another exciting Antarctic adventure looming on the horizon, and once again the question arises - how to get to the other side of the world and still feel human?  Well I do believe I have now found at least one way where I have not suffered the debilitating jet lag I have in the past when I have flown to South America.

Air New Zealand now has a direct flight from Auckland to Buenos Aires which is only 11 hours. Combine that with a direct flight from Perth to Auckland of 6 hours, with a short break in between, and a civilised mid-afternoon arrival into BA, and you have a recipe for a much more successful recovery from long haul flying!

It also helped to fly Business Class, both with jet lag and with my gammy knee which is due to a pinched nerve somewhere in the groin/gluteus area. My jury is out regarding the new Business Class seating configuration, but the flat-lying bed and the thick mattress was certainly comfortable, the food was excellent, the service was cheerful and efficient, and the safety videos are still cleverly done to keep people entertained whilst imparting important information. I miss the Hobbit and LOTR ones though!

An auspicious start to the trip!

The Start of the Great Whale Adventure

It is 6am and I am sitting on the plane ready for take-off from Perth to Auckland, only to be told by the captain that “one person has decided not to join us for the flight”,  so they started to off load luggage.  Some 5 minutes later the captain informed us that the person “has now decided to join us after all!”  so there was more waiting while the luggage was put back on the plane!

My eyes are red and scratchy from 2 hours of interrupted sleep before leaving for the airport, but I can’t complain because I have just come home from my last PIAF performance for 2016.  It was Apocrifu at the Heath Ledger Theatre, a venue which is a joy in itself and which up until a couple of weeks ago, I had not visited.  I have now viewed 3 performances there, almost in the same seat each time!

Apocrifu was a wondrous combination of dance, puppetry and the glorious singing of A Filleta, an all-male a cappella singing group from Corsica, singing the traditional polyharmonies of their heritage.  The singing is very reminiscent of Georgian polyharmonies, with a bit of church choral chord resolution at the endings. A Filleta refers to a kind of fern growing on Corsica.

Apocrifu was an amazing, exciting, exhilarating performance.

Arctic tapas

Tapas are a fab way to get a taste of lots of little things, and have found their way all over the world from Spain, and yes have even reached the Arctic!

Saturday evening (which felt like it was still in the middle of the day) I went on the Longyearbyen Arctic Tapas tour.  It is run by a character called Bent - there is always one person around who is the gregarious character that everyone loves and knows, the kind that no sensible woman would take seriously but just enjoy, who is full of great ideas and has a passion for what he does.  Bent fits the bill!

He has developed an extremely unique and interesting tourist attraction whereby you get to sit in a specially modified bus (with sheepskins covering every seat), travel in style around the sights of Longyearbyen (such as they are) whilst drinking copious quantities of beer, wine or Aquavit, whatever you tipple is, and feast on imaginatively displayed plates of tapas that are specific to the Arctic.

These foods are smoked, dried, or buried for 6 years versions of fish, meat (reindeer) and award- winning blue cheeses, accompanied by seed crackers and numerous tasty relishes.  They were delicious, and the only thing I left on my plate was a lettuce leaf.

While we were eating the tapas (the bus has been modified to contain tables for 2 or 4), Bent drove us around and out of Longyearbyen, filling us in with all sorts of interesting historical tidbits.  Bless him, there were 17 of us on this trip, 16 of whom were Norwegian, and half of those were locals.  He kindly gave the commentary in English, being aware that everyone else would also understand, but also recognizing that they could all engage in lots of banter that would leave me out if he spoke in Norwegian and then translated.  Very thoughtful of him, indeed!

Bent was on a mission to find Wildlife from a moving bus, and the girls in front of me kindly got my attention each time he saw something. So I have now seen my first Arctic fox (or polar fox as they call them here), ptarmigan (totally blending in with the rocks on which it was sitting), barnacle geese, my first reindeer in its natural habitat (thereby discounting the ones I saw on South Georgia, which were introduced, and are now gone I believe), an Arctic tern (seen plenty of them down in Antarctica - nice to see them in the Arctic!), husky dogs, all in 3 hours trundling around dirt roads in the Arctic Tapas bus!

It augers well for polar bear and walrus from the ship, and apparently there should be no good reason not to see Beluga whales!