Ushuaia to Home, Thursday to Friday, 13-14 March 2025

We woke up early and got our luggage out and had a final quick breakfast. We took a bus into central Ushuaia, had a tour of the local museum. The museum had been a prison when Ushuaia was a British prison colony (rather like Australia), to the museum has small wings radiating out from a central area which were, for the most part, the actual cells that prisoners were housed in. In addition to maritime history, local history, and of course prison history and various wars etc., it also had a small contemporary art exhibition. he bus brought us back downtown, where most of us got Ushuaia stamps in our passports and walked around the main street of town. After much searching I finally found a nice Antarctica baseball hat for Larry! We went to the hotel that was our gathering place, where a light buffet was available, and then we were called in groups to the buses to head to the airport. Off we went on the charter flight to Buenos Aires, arriving around dinner time. At that point there were more goodbyes as folks either went to transfer to connections, or for some, into Buenos Aires to stay the night and wait for connections the next day.  

We headed to our flight to Houston, which went smoothly, and then customs in Houston, and then transfer to San Francisco. Arriving in SFO we reclaimed our luggage - hooray - and took BART home, giving us a little time to re-acclimate. It was a 28-hour journey for the three flights, but I was glad to be home, midday. We did a little grocery shopping (we had tried to eat everything perishable before we left), started doing laundry (8 loads eventually) and opened a giant bag of mail. It had been rather nice to be away from daily life, cooking, cleaning, email, errands, for these past three weeks. And what an adventure it was! Truly the trip of a lifetime.

Falklands to Ushuaia, Wednesday, 12 March 2025

We had some wonderful final lectures for the naturalists, and did the packing. Our final dinner with the gang was so much fun, we are so lucky to ahve made these wonderful new friends who helped mkae this trip such a blast. 

Three weeks in this room passed quickly! We managed to get our parkas and jackets in the suitcases - just barely. Luckily we did not buy much beyond pins and yarn and baseball hats, so that all packed fine. We will have to have our bags out at 6:00am and leave soon after.

The seas were relatively calm and we headed to bed early for the early wakeup.

Falkland Islands, Tuesday, 11 March 2025

Today was our final day in the Falklands, and it has been an adventure. Last night remained very windy and choppy, but we were able to sleep and get up ready to go on our final day of being ashore. The morning expedition took us to West Point Island with large number of Gentoos and Rockhoppers ... I will never tire of seeing their amusing walking style on land. By now the Base Camp suit up and zodiac routine is second nature. It is hard to believe that soon we will be leaving the Falklands and heading to Ushuaia and home. We went to the spectacular Devil's Nose area, which involved a very long hike from a boggy landing through high tufted grass to a rocky descent to a large beach. The tall grasses were filled with Gentoo penguins nearby and in the distance. We finally arrived at the albatross colony, a real thrill after seeing them fly by the ship on their enormous wings (8' wingspan), and got to see many chicks ready to fledge, occasionally being fed by parents. The fledglings are quite large, about the size of a 4-5 pound chicken at the butcher. The penguins and albatross were mixed together, and we were able to get fairly close (still 2-3m away) because we were in the tall grass. Seeing the albatross adults soar over us was amazing. 

After lunch, we went out for our final expedition, landing at Marie-Paul and Luc's land called Grave Cove, which they allow National Geo folks to cross. We hiked to the beach, down a rocky slope, where I almost fell, for the third time on this hike, but managed to catch myself, it would have been a nasty fall on the rocks. The hiking sticks have been hugely helpful. The Rockhoppers and Gentoos were deep into their molting stage and looked kind of miserable. There was a sea lion in the shallow water attacking penguins one after the other, Reuben called him the serial killer - as he would attack a penguin and kind of toss it away without even eating it. A bit gruesome. The stunning black and white bird called Johnny Rooks (striated caracara) were flying close overhead. Hiking back seemed a lot easier.

It was a little bittersweet at dinner with our group, knowing that this was our last expedition together. As everyone on board was invited to submit 4-6 photos, the combined slide show of about 20 minutes was spectacular, some incredible photos, places and wildlife I didn't see, it was wonderful to see this.