We got a driver to drive us around Ushuaia, a city in the Tierra del Fuego islands. Actually, Zac got a driver for us all, since he speaks Spanish. I don't know what we would have done without Zac and Fiona with us. Wait. I know! We would have had to pay for the super pricey Princess excursions. Anything associated with the ship was at least twice the amount that we had to pay when taking care of arrangements ourselves (Or in our case, if Zac and Fiona took care of it.). Actually, we probably wouldn't have paid the high price. Mike and I are too "thrifty." So, I really have no idea what we would have done. Back to the story.... The driver took us on a scenic drive of Ushuaia. I loved how the town of Ushuaia was at the foot of all of these mountains. It had kind of a who-ville feel to it and it was so beautiful. 
At a scenic lookout, the kids didn't care to look down, but wanted to climb up, up, up. I love the dirt on Jonah's little bum. The beginning of a very dirty day for Jonah...
We took a mile long chairlift up to Glacier Martial. This is where I decided that I definitely have a fear of heights. I never used to be afraid. I remember riding chairlifts with no problem and riding a gondola in Banff and I have been on my fair share of mountain peaks. I have never really been afraid. But this chairlift made my palms sweat. I was so nervous! I tried to be calm, especially because I didn't want Paige to be scared. But I was so nervous way up there on that chairlift for what seemed like FOREVER! Did I tell you it was a whole mile long?! And I had Jack strapped to my front with the Ergo. Boy, I love that Ergo... I was so thankful when I saw the top of the chairlift. I wanted OFF!
We loved these trees with the big "poofs" on them.
We hiked around a little at the top which the kids really enjoyed. It was really rocky, as you can see in the pictures and they loved climbing up on the big rocks! But it was really cold. And Jonah, being Jonah, got even colder after walking in a stream. Not just any stream, but a stream made from the melting glacier. I saw him walking in the stream but I didn't stop him because I thought he was balancing on dry rocks. Silly me. After Jonah got wet, he was freezing and only wanted Daddy to carry him (an annoyed Daddy at that). The Rollins' kids were cold too and Nuala only wanted to be carried. She had a fever later that afternoon. Poor Nuala. We kept trying to walk up to the sunshine to get warm, but it seemed to get further and further away, so we didn't stay up by the glacier for long.
I didn't want to get back on the chairlift (Oh my gosh! My hands are actually sweating right now after seeing that picture!). I wanted to walk down, but Mike convinced me that I was being ridiculous. Well, he didn't actually convince me that I was ridiculous for feeling afraid, but it would have been a bit ridiculous to walk down a rocky trail (where there was one) with Jack strapped to me. Mike, on the other hand, thought my fear was ridiculous, the logical being that he is. I had to keep telling myself that people went up and down that chairlift every day and that it hadn't crashed down yet. And if it were a real threat then people wouldn't pay every day to do it... Thankfully the wind was so strong at our faces and soooo cold that I focused on being freezing instead of being up high on the way down. I was shaking all the way down. It really was FREEZING!
We did finally make it down and stopped at a little cabin-style cafe next to the parking lot and got hot chocolate to warm up. And that was pretty much the end of our adventure. We were all pretty tired and cold and Jonah was soaked (His pants, socks and shoes were completely saturated.). We got back to the ship and napped Jack and had Paige and Jonah watch a movie in Nana's room before playing in the pool.
Good-bye to the beautiful and very cold Ushuaia!
Next stop: Punta Arenas
5 comments:
I wish we could have stayed here longer, it's so beautiful. Definitely a place I want to go back to...
Ahhh, so beautiful there...I'm glad you braved the chair lift for the ride down, that would've been a long walk, I think :) You forgot to mention how Mike and Paige were MIA while geocaching and we had the driver go up and down the road looking for them, haha!
uh, ya... I forgot to mention the part about losing Mike and Paige. It is so typical of Mike! I am always looking for him. I wonder if I could put a GPS chip in him... Did you mention that we lost Zac and Nuala that day too in your Blog, when he got onto the chairlift without telling anyone?
I am very impressed you braved the chairlift. Not sure I would have or at least been brave enough to not let anyone realize how terrified I was. It was sounding like a pretty good day until I see you had lost people. :-) Did you do some geocaching at each stop? Did you find some good things?
I had huge aspirations for Ushuaia. After 2 days on the ship without much to look at I was ready for an adventure. For most of the day before we cruised around the horn, which was a letdown. With modern instrumentation equipment and especially a huge ship like ours, all the history of the horn being a ship graveyard and the worst waters in the world, were a little lost on us. On top of that, it was foggy out and you really couldn’t see much. Anyway, when we go off the ship, I really thought (in my mind…) that we were going to go for a nice hike to a glacier and just have a really cool day. I know, what was I thinking…with 5 kids that was never going to really happen. We did ride the lift and play around near the glacier for a while which was cool, and then I had the opportunity to search for a geocache that was near the bottom of the lift. I didn’t find it. When we got back to the ship for the kids to all take a nap, Zac and I actually got off and took a cab back up to look again. We still didn’t find it!!! Anyway, the day wasn’t what I planned, but it was still a cool place. Again like Falkland Islands, Antarctica, and Punta Arenas (the next stop) it was another beautiful place!!!
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