The second day on the Drake Passage was pretty rough. We had 5m swells and winds between 10 and 45 knots. The captain had worked the vessel perfectly so that the swells were all coming from astern. We went further out to the west but it made the ride so much nicer. We even managed to get to Ushuaia earlier than scheduled, about 9pm on Friday. All in all we travelled 2,300 nautical miles (4,250 km) on the seas since leaving Ushuaia 12 days prior.
It was quite odd as we were sailing back into the Beagle Channel and could see trees and other greenery. After ice and rock with the only plants being lichen and moss, higher order plants just seemed out of place. On Friday afternoon, one of the last activities was an open book, group quiz. Since Mike and I had some remaining internet data to use up, we were able to google some of the harder questions, and our group won hands down. Our prize was a bottle of red wine and a bottle of champagne. It didn’t quite pay off the internet access, but was a start.
Once the port pilot boarded the vessel and was guiding us in, we had a Captain’s Reception with champagne. This was followed by our last dinner aboard and then drinks in the Polar Bear Bar.
Saturday morning we were up early for disembarkation and there was a great sunrise over the Beagle Channel in Ushuaia.
Our flight was in the early afternoon so we had all morning to kill. We met up with Neil (our tour guide from Patagonia) and his newest group, then wandered around looking in souvenir shops and grabbing lunch from a bakery.
We boarded our flight and surprisingly we were on an A340. Aerolineas didn’t impose their 15kg checked baggage limit, which made things much nicer. Looking back we could have purchased many more penguin souvenirs.
We got back into Buenos Aires transferred from the airport back to our hotel with our group of 7 remaining from our Patagonia tour, then headed out for a final dinner together. Once again, back to the steak and Malbec.
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