The Last City at the End of the World

We were up at 4am this morning to get our cases ready and outside the room by 5.15am. Then we headed down for the special breakfast that had been provided in the lobby. We met up with several other Silversea guests at breakfast and wasted no time getting to know one another.
As expected our fellow guests came from all over the world. One couple was even from a really exotic place called Ottawa, and lived within sight of a place called Ralph's Diner on Carling Avenue. At 6am we our bags were loaded on the bus and we were off to the airport for our 8.55am flight to Ushuaia.

I had expected a small charter flight from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia, but we ended up on a honking great commercial plane. I was not impressed with the check-in procedure. People checking in together seemed to end up in random seats not near each other. Denise was 3 rows back from me, and I ended up initially sitting next to lady from Arizona whose husband was in the row behind on the other side of the plane. After take off it transpired that none of the other seats in the row her husband was sitting in were even occupied. So I swapped seats with him - and spent the rest of the flight with a whole row to myself.

At 12.30pm we touched down in Ushuaia, and were met by the Silversea rep and loaded onto a coach for a trip to a hotel at the top of a mountain for lunch.

Ushuaia (population approx 60,000) is the captial of Tierra Del Fuego and is also the Southernmost city in the world. It is from here that most of the Antarctic cruise ships depart. Tierra Del Fuego is a smaller territory within a larger region called Patagonia, which is shared by Chile and Argentina.
Many many years ago, I once had an argument with a University friend about whether being able to speak Welsh was any use at all. "Where can you speak Welsh other than in Wales?"he asked.  "Patagonia" I replied.  It turned out that he'd never heard of Patagonia, and when I told him that there were Welsh settlements there he refused to believe that a place called Patagonia even existed, let alone that there were Welsh settlements there. All those years ago, I never imagined that one day I would actually be here in Patagonia.
To be honest the Welsh settlements here are in the Chubut Valley, which is a long way north of where we are.  Shame really as I was hoping to show off my exotic language skills in front of my fellow travelers by saying "Bore Da" to all the locals.

I have just got my first sight of Silver Explorer down in the channel below us. Soon we will be getting back on the coach and heading to the ship.