A 3 hour cruise

1 Sept Happy Labor Day We got up to at our usual time, and it was still dark outside. Sunrise is after 8 or so, and we're 2 hours ahead of the east coast, due to daylight savings time. Yesterday we found a cruise office open, which surprised us on Sunday since everything else was pretty much closed. So we signed up for a 3 hour cruise of Beagle Channel. It was suppose to leave at 9:30, but we didn't get underway until 10. The water was calm and the power catamaran was smooth although not warm enough for our thinned blood. The water in the channel is glacial deep and very clear, considering the channel is where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans mingle. There are several small rocky islands that we sailed around, with several varieties of cormorants, sea lions and even a juvenile condor. There are two different breeds of sea lions that make the channel their home, and they still smell like their diet. It was too early for penguins and the cormorants really hadn't come back in full force, since technically it is still winter. Both sea lion colonies had yearling pups, but they get quite big in their first year. Breeding season is about 6 weeks away according to our guide. We enjoyed the scenery, but have come to the conclusion that Alaska has more to offer than going all the way to Tierra del Fuego. Been there, done that, didn't buy a t-shirt. Ushuaia has a lot of gravel roads, so when the local merchants are open for business, a lot of effort is kept sweeping the floors because there's a gravel fine powder that gets tracked in from the sidewalks and streets. It would drive me crazy. In case you were wondering, Antarctica is about 1000 km from Ushuaia and Antarctica cruises are only offered in late Spring and Summer. The cruise office was selling late Spring, last minute deals for only $3200 USD. I didn't ask how long the cruise was for, because the ships aren't in port yet. After we got back from the channel cruise we walked around "town" which is mostly two main streets. The town gets a lot of tourist traffic Dec-Feb from cruise ships, and then again in winter if there's snow. Other than that it's a sleepy hollow, with a population around 100,000 people in peak seasons. The restaurant business is very frustrating to service oriented folks. It took us over an hour to have our lunch order filled, and then the food was so-so. The frustrating thing was the restaurant was not busy, just the waitstaff was too busy talking with their local friends to bother with filling our complex order of club sandwiches. Roger was of the opinion that they had to wait for the produce to be flown in from Buenos Aires. Regardless the sandwiches didn't last long, because we were both hungry. While we were waiting, I watched the news and have come to the conclusion that the media just likes sensationalistic stories, the more blood the better the news. We've seen this globally and not just in the USA. Tomorrow is a travel day, from Ushuaia to Buenos Aires to Iguazu Falls in the northern tip of Argentina. Roger has sort of come up with a game plan.