Our unexpected full day in Ushuaia turned out quite nice. We started with a visit to the Maritime Museum of Ushuaia, located in the former prison which had been the core of the foundation of Ushuaia as a penal colony a long time ago.

We then wandered through the main shopping and restaurant portion of downtown Ushuaia – lots of tourist goods, a large number of restaurants offering all you can eat buffets (we didn’t partake), and tour companies offering trips to see penguins (been there, done that).

Lunch required busing to Patagonia Mia, a restaurant near the entrance of the Tierra del Fuego national park. While not bad, the meal we had there was perhaps the most disappointing of the trip – they only offered fish (cod) as a main course (we managed to get a breaded beef filet for Bas), and it was bland and uninspired. Quite a contrast from the diverse and almost universally great food we’ve enjoyed aboard the National Geographic Explorer.

After a quick stop at the ship, we took a two hour bus ride to Estancia Harberton. Estancia means “ranch” or “farm”, but while Estancia Harberton used to be a sheep farm and place where firewood was harvested, today it’s more of a historic site. On property is also the Museo Acatushun Aves y Mamiferos Marinos Australes, the Museum of Birds and Marine Mammals, which features the world’s best collection of marine mammal skeletons and skulls. Pretty impressive, although we had limited time available to truly appreciate the collection.

Our final dinner aboard the Explorer awaited our return.

We’re now just about thoroughly packed and ready to get up before dawn so we can leave Ushuaia just after dawn. We hope to be in Miami late Friday night at a hotel Lindblad has arranged for all of us on the charter. On Saturday we move to a nice hotel in Coconut Grove, a trendy area south of downtown Miami.

The GPS track for our day in and near Ushuaia is below.

Not much more to add to our post below. We arrived in Ushuaia last night. And we’re here for another night.

GPS track on how we got here is below:

So maybe we shouldn’t be laughing and amused at this very moment, but when the announcement came over the public address system that a small complication had developed with respect to our charter flight to Miami, we found it pretty funny.

These Magellanic penguins we saw a couple of days ago are kind of like us right now - milling about without a clear direction to go in

Apparently Argentinian officials would not give clearance to our plane to come to Ushuaia from Lima (where the plane is at present). That apparently will be resolved shortly, but some other bureaucratic complications require the plane to overnight in Ushuaia, so we’re not actually leaving here until tomorrow, and thus get another night aboard the National Geographic Explorer, which is great. We also don’t have to fly red-eye, which I truly appreciate.

So for now we get to enjoy a short tour of Ushuaia, some walk-around time, lunch at a local restaurant, and some as yet unconfirmed activity this afternoon.

We would like to give our sympathies to all the Lindblad Expedition folks in New York who managed to rebook most everyone’s connecting flights for tomorrow morning only to have to do it all over again to account for this latest flight change. And let’s not forget all the folks here in Ushuaia who have to put up with 140 or so guests (some of whom will unfortunately be unhappy about this latest change) for another day or so. If any of you feel under appreciated, let us know and we’ll remind you what a great job you do.

Easter Island it ain’t, but it does have its share of interesting sights. I speak of Miami, Florida, which is apparently where we will end up on early Friday morning.

Apparently the airports throughout South America are all messed up and clogged up because of the closure of the airport in Santiago, Chile. Lindblad Expeditions decided the most prudent course of action was to charter a Miami Air plane to pick us up in Ushuaia tomorrow and then take us all to Miami (with refueling stops in Lima, Peru, and La Paz, Bolivia). And from Miami we’ll figure out how to make our way home on one of the weekly flights available to us.

In a way it’s a bit of serendipity, as we recently realized we had no birthday presents for Bas’ upcoming 13th birthday in a couple of weeks, and we know Miami shopping options far exceed those on Bonaire or in Ushuaia. And, I need to get my big honking Alienware M17x notebook computer repaired before it completely melts down, and that can only happen when the computer is the in U.S. for a few days.

We’re planning on staying in the Miami area for all of next week, and will get home a couple of days later than expected, but hopefully well rested.

We did get some definitive word this evening at our nightly re-cap aboard the National Geographic Explorer about our on-going travel plans after we arrive in Ushuaia in a couple of days. That word was that our previously planned charter back to Santiago, Chile this coming Thursday has been canceled. And with it, our continuation to Easter Island. We’re a little disappointed, but at the same time quite relieved to not have to brave the chaos of post-earthquake Chile.

The only other key thing we were told is that Lindblad’s corporate office is working on a charter to get us out of Ushuaia after we arrive on Thursday morning, but at present it was not clear where the charter flight would take us. It was also explained that those of us who had been on the Easter Island extension would be getting a letter detailing how refunds, etc., would be processed and dealt with.

After the brief announcement and discussion about the changes in our travel plans, everyone on board was asked what their final return destination airport would be, presumably so that appropriate return flights and connections could be arranged. That didn’t quite address the issue of how to spend the extra week or so we had planned to be away from home, so maybe we’ll just end up at home sooner than expected. Considering the Traveling Richters were having issues today figuring out to spend a week in Argentina, that might be for the best.

So, for now, all we know is what we’re definitely not doing, which is returning to Chile. We don’t know what we are doing instead, though.

But mystery and serendipity are all part of of expedition and exploration travel, so we’ll let ourselves be surprised, and if we don’t like the surprise, we’ll get it changed somehow. For now, we’ll pack our cold weather clothes away, and assume we’ll be at least a moderately temperate climate from Ushuaia onward.

Today was the last real day of our three week voyage, and we spent it in the East Falklands, specifically at Carcass Island and New Island. It was a gloriously sunny day, apparently a rarity around here, and Krystyana and I enjoyed a nice long nature hike in the morning as well as our first real sighting of Magellanic penguins, and then in the afternoon we visited a multi-bird rookery on New Island.

There we saw rock hopper penguins, nesting shags, and nesting black brow albatross.

We have lots of excellent pictures and I hope to post at least some of the photos of the last couple of days while we’re at sea tomorrow (which is also when we pack).

We arrive in Ushuaia on Thursday morning.

The GPS track from today is below. We are traveling east to west on this track, just in case that’s not entirely clear.