It’s The End of the World

And I feel fine!

So far 50 is pretty awesome. I will admit, the closer I got to the half-century mark, the older it started to sound. And the less it seemed possible to have it describe my age. Most days, my spirit feels about 30. My body occasionally feels about 75, so I guess 50 averages out. It still feels a little weird to finally be here, though.

My birthday began in dramatic fashion as I pulled open our cabin’s curtains. We still had about 90 minutes before we would be in “Glacier Alley” as we headed to our southernmost port of Ushuaia. I wasn’t sure what I would see slowly motoring past our balcony so early.

Well, we were ahead of schedule and what greeted me was a wall of beautiful blue, crevassed ice cascading into the water about a ship’s length away from me. I literally gasped. I had never seen glaciers so close while still in my pajamas.

We watched as three more glaciers appeared like roadside waterfalls. Each was a little different; some wide, some narrow. Some dropping like cliffs into the water, some slowly descending. The glaciers were so beautiful and so close, I wondered why we made all that effort to see the Amalia Glacier a few days ago; a glacier that was so familiar as to be somewhat forgettable.

My only guess why a bigger deal wasn’t made of “Glacier Alley” (it was a passing mention by the port expert during an earlier lecture and only had a brief note in the daily schedule) was that only the people on the left side of the ship could see it.

At the Amalia Glacier, we did a full spin and entered and departed along the same route so everyone could eventually get a view and photos. Glacier Alley, on the other hand, was simply a perk for the port side passengers so Princess apparently didn’t make a big deal about it.

I’m still patting myself on the back for getting a port side room. So far, it’s definitely been the preferred side to be on, Glacier Alley being high on the list of reasons (the main reason we chose the left side was that it is the land-facing side the entire trip so it has more interesting views on At Sea days).

We arrived in the Argentinian city of Ushuaia (ooo-SHWEYE-ahh) a little before noon as scheduled. However, the winds were too strong – with gusts to 35 knots or 40 mph – for the ship to safely approach the dock. So the Emerald Princess did a big doughnut in the harbor (some of it by wind power) to kill time, allowing all of us to get an unscheduled view of the southernmost city in the world.

Ushuaia is very picturesque. The Beagle Channel (named after the boat that carried Charles Darwin on his scientific explorations down here) is on one side and the last mountains of the Andes range tower behind the city. The population is mostly in the flatland but some buildings and homes sit a little higher up so they can look south towards Antarctica. The mountains are so tall, they have a very definitive tree line above which nothing can grow. The top third or so looks barren and very jaggedy like a saw and is topped with snow that never melts.

We had about 90 minutes to wander around town on our own before our tour. We quickly discovered the town is a little hilly. Nothing on the scale of San Francisco or Seattle but enough that many sidewalks had cement steps built into them. We managed them easily since we have been conditioning on the ship for the past week (we are averaging 2.5 miles of walking per day; we believe we should get a 50% bonus for stairs, carpeted or not).

I tried very hard to find some souvenirs depicting the city’s self-assigned moniker of “The End of the World.” I thought it would be hysterical to acquire such an item on my 50th birthday. Disappointingly, nothing really caught my eye. All I have to show for as bragging rights for being in the southernmost point of substantial civilization is a sticker. Go me and my subpar shopping skillz!

We had lunch on our own. We wandered around trying to remember the name of the pub my dad suggested from the time he was in Ushuaia with my grandma (the Antarctica trip they took when Grandma was 79). Instead, we found ourselves in a pizza joint ordering a ham and pineapple pizza. As totally Western United States as that sounds, it was a unique experience.

Instead of tomato sauce, the cheese and toppings were sitting on an olive oil base. The cheese was thick and chewy, the ham was lightly sweet and higher quality than anything we get at home, and the pineapple was full rings instead of small triangular chunks. The center of each pineapple ring was decorated with a maraschino cherry. It was a pineapple upside down (pizza) pie! It was very festive and was unexpectedly delicious. While not anywhere near an authentic Argentinian meal (we will have those later in the trip), it was just the unfamiliar familiarity our taste buds and GI tracts were craving.

Due to our hour late, wind-driven arrival into Ushuaia, all the tours ended up running behind schedule. We didn’t know this, of course, until we were already in line on the dock outside the ship. We were standing in what was essentially a wind tunnel created by the Emerald Princess and three other smaller ships that were bound for Antarctica (we were told that 85% of boats that leave out of Ushuaia are heading to Antarctica about 600 miles south).

Although we were given the option to wait for our bus inside the shelter of Deck 4, Rob and I opted to stand outside in the whipping cold breeze to try to get an appreciation for the weather here at the End of the World. We are weather nerds after all. What’s the point in coming all the way down here to look it at through windows? Bring on the wind!

When I was packing and checking average temperatures for ports along our trip, the lowest temperature I saw was the low-40s. Having recently survived Omaha in December, I figured a couple layering jackets and some long sleeve shirts would suffice. And they would were it not for the wind that I did not factor in…at all. It is a cold and biting wind, either whisking off the Antarctic or swirling around the ocean without any land to slow it down. It is harsh and unrelenting.

My two coats, two hoods, scarf, and gloves worked well enough. But a knit hat and some fleece-lined shirts would have been wise additions to my suitcase. As would have some hair clips or a headband. So much silver hair dancing in my eyes!

Our tour was ok not great. It was a simple bus tour to the Tierra del Fuego National Park and the official end of the Pan American Highway (it starts in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska). It’s as close to the end of the world you can get by car so I decided that would be a fitting way to commemorate my 50th birthday.

The park was pretty enough, with some streams and lakes and huge mountains. The mountains somehow seem not quite as enormous as the ones in Alaska or the Canadian Rockies. They are more brown and less grey than those North American versions. The Andes are also a lot more sawtoothy on the top, making photographing them somewhat addictive.

In addition to learning about the beech trees that cover the island and park of Tierra del Fuego, we heard lots of familiar info about beavers…which are not native to this region. At all.

To try to increase the fur trade here, 50 Canadian beavers were let loose on the island of Tierra del Fuego in the 1940s. Without any natural predators, the beavers now number in the hundreds of thousands and grow as large as Golden Retrievers. I was quite disappointed not to see one of these Rodents of Unusual Size.

As we bumped along the Pan American Highway to its terminus, I realized my Westernized American mind assumed that something called a Highway would be paved. And in the parts through Denver and Albuquerque, I’m sure it is. But here in southern Argentina, the road is all dirt and gravel and dust. So much dust. Nevertheless, arriving at the end was cause for celebration and photos, even if we had only driven on a handful of miles of it…unlike the quite broken-in minivan we saw sporting a British Columbia license plate.

We got back to the ship right on time despite leaving an hour late. I do wonder what parts of our tour we didn’t see. The cruise line was very generous and comped us $20 each for the inconvenience of arriving late and throwing the day off schedule. And we didn’t even complain! Good job, Princess! We’ve already spent our goodwill refund on wine. Cheers!

The ship ended up leaving port about 30 minutes late due to a small group of people on a private tour. Although the ship doesn’t typically wait, our itinerary allowed some wiggle room. This was explained by the captain over the loudspeaker to all 3000 passengers minus 6.

Rob and I watched the ship’s webcam and sure enough, six harried figures eventually appeared, running towards the ship. Reports are they were greeted to waves and cheers by at least 1,000 folks on the starboard side. Note to self: never be late to the ship…for so very many reasons.

We ended the night with a lovely birthday dinner at one of the specialty restaurants on board. I was serenaded by four waiters in varying accents and was given an enormous hunk of chocolate cake which we will enjoy after dinner tonight.

All in all, a fantastic way to kick off my next half-century of walking this beautiful planet.