To Antarctica - New Year's 2011

We awoke well on the way back to South America, with far calmer seas than on the way down. Even so, Randy had been up in the lounge quite late the night before (it's very easy to get to 3am when it never gets dark!) so he was fine to stay in the room, watch the ocean out the window and watch some movies (The Help was really good). After dinner we attended the Captain's farewell cocktail party in the lounge where we were treated to a slideshow of pictures our fellow passengers from the week. There were some really good photographers on board with us! Afterwards we had a great sunset, then headed to bed before midnight.

Since the seas were so calm, we made great time heading back. As we passed Cape Horn and entered the Beagle Channel we were treated to some dolphins that followed the boat for a while, jumping and zipping under the boat. We had a barbecue with the crew on the back deck with sunny skies and (relatively) warm temperature. After we docked and the boat cleared customs, we went ashore with several of our newfound friends from the ship. We wandered through downtown Ushuaia, which is quite small (and has lots of penguin mannequins!) We eventually found the Irish Pub the crew had told us about and ended up staying out past midnight with several of them.

We woke at 6:45, had a quick breakfast, then disembarked the boat. We walked into town and hung out at the Albatross Hotel for a while (Rick, of course, did a bit more penguin shopping). At 11 we boarded buses to the airport for our charter flight back to Buenos Aires. The flight was about 3 and a half hours. In Buenos Aires we collected our bags, said goodbye to the many fun new friends we had made, then headed to the Hotel Faena.

The hotel was in a great area of the city and was really nice. We relaxed for a bit, then headed down to the bar for a snack and a cocktail. We set up a private tour for the next day, then changed for dinner. The restaurant in the hotel was nice, though we were pretty much the only ones there since we were eating so early at 8:30. At 10 we had tickets to a Tango Show that is in a small theater at the hotel. About 20 minutes into the performance we realized two things: we were really tired, and neither of us likes Tango. We snuck out discretely and scurried up to the room to sleep.