Video: Sea Lion Bitching and Burping At The Same Time

Taking the navigation tour in Ushuaia to see Les Eclaireurs Lighthouse and wildlife in the southern sea near Antarctica.

Ushuaia: Restaurants, Accommodation and Tours

Thought I would also summarize a little bit about the foods, the tours and the B&B I have stayed in Ushuaia, also includes some hyperlinks and pictures for my fellow travelers.

Restaurants

I don’t eat extravagantly everyday, but I try to have a good meal once in a while, and try something local if possible. Overall the meals costs between US$10-30. For tipping, I don’t think it is required, but I do 10% anyway. Unlike Peru, the foods and coffee culture in Argentina is at a different level, and can be expensive. I went to Tante Sara Cafe twice, for dinner and for lunch. My first dinner in Ushuaia was chicken and spinach ravioli in Bolognese sauce dish. The ravioli and the sauce were actually charged separately. I guess as with most pasta dishes, it is gonna be like that. The ravioli was good, but not excellent. With water and tips, it came to be around AR$160 (equivalent to US$20).

Anyhow, the flat bread called flat meditarraneo from the same restaurant I had for lunch was really good, also with agua sin gas, it came up to be around AR$110 (US$15). On the second night, I went to Küar 1900 where I had a king crab risotto, which was fantastico. It cost about AR$190 (US$24). On the third day, I had lunch at a restaurant called Banana’s, I had their menu del dia, which included an onion creamy soup of some kind, a risotto and a coffee or tea afterwards, The menu set was AR$80 (US$10), I also had a local orange soda. So, in total, it was about AR$110 (US$15).

In general, I think drinks are more expensive, water (with or without gas) in restaurant cost about AR$20 (US$2.5). So, I tend to go to a supermarket to get some drinks and snacks on the first day I get to a town. They don’t have any good choice of apple, only “tranny” apple, very old and ugly one. I got banana instead. Hope there are better apples in the other towns.

Tanta Sara Cafe+Bar

Address: San Martin 701 y Fadul, Ushuaia

Telephone: +542901423912

Küar 1900

Address: San Martin 471, Ushuaia

Telephone: +54290115518530

Website: http://www.kuaronline.com/

Banana’s

Address: San Martin 273, Ushuaia

Telephone: +542901424021

Accommodation

The B&B I stayed is called Valle Frio Ushuaia, run by two brothers, very nice gentlemen and helpful. It is about 5 blocks up a small hill from the city center/port. It is not fancy nancy type of B&B, but it is clean and is pretty charming in its own way. If you have a tour in the morning and need to get to the port, it takes about 5-10 mins to walk to the port from the B&B. Not bad at all. They do safe in the room and very nicely prepared, a power adapter or splitter whatever you call, that will work for US plug. I think that is very considerate of them to do that. Hotel and B&B in Ushuaia in general are not cheap, especially in peak season, mostly over US$200. This one is in the lower range for the B&B category. I think they charged me US$80 a night. I would totally recommend it.

Valle Frio Ushuaia

Address: Bouchard No 310, Ushuaia 9410, Argentina

Telephone: +542901423610

Website: http://www.vallefrioushuaia.com/

Tours

Two of three tours (National Park + End of the World Train tour and Navigation in the Beagle Channel tour) I have joined are pretty standard, the penguin tour is only run by one travel agency. I booked all of them from Pira Tours, they are responsive from their website and in email exchange, which I like. I did book my tours ahead of time, but when I got here, I could see that even if you did not book any tours, it should be easy enough to find some tours the day before. When I was in the states, they seemed to have trouble letting me to pay the tours online with my credit card. I noticed a few Tripadvisor comments about the same issue. But they did reserve the tours for me and I came to pay in person the day before with cash (or credit card). They do accept American dollars as well. At the time when I am traveling, it is actually better to pay in dollars. Depending on the exchange rate, one can consider doing that. They do have two locations, one on San Martin street, the other one by the port you cannot miss it. For tipping, apparently it is also not required. But for the first tour to the National Park, I think the guide did a fantastic job, so I did give him AR$50 tip (which is equivalent to US$6). For the two tours, it were a bigger tour, and the guides were very impersonal, so I didn’t give any tips, nor did I see anyone did.

Pira Tours

Address: San Martin 847, Ushuaia

Telephone: +5402901435557

Website: http://www.piratour.com.ar/

Day 5 (Part 1): Adios Ushuaia! Hola Bariloche!

Times have gone by so fast, my 4 days in Ushuaia has come to an end so soon already. Woke up at 6:20am to take a shower and get my backpack ready. Lang Lang welcomed me with breakfast at 7am this morning. I talked to him a little more, apparently he and his brother has been taking care of this B&B for 8 years. It is his full time job. He was born and grew up in Ushuaia all his life, love it here. Who wouldn’t. I can imagine if I was born in a small town like Ushuaia, I would really appreciate the remoteness and peacefulness of this town, like whatever shit is happening elsewhere in the world, it would hardly ever get there. As I was chewing my third pastry (every morning he has given a basket of pastry, a coffee cake, some ham, more bread, coffee and juice, I am totally pastry out!), I started to romantically daydream I would be running a B&B myself someday, I wouldn’t mind to cook for the guests, ask them where they come from and where they are going, I wouldn’t mind to make their beds neither, and assist them in any way I can. Even to clean the bathroom, that probably is the last thing I prefer to do, I don’t think it would be too bad though. Aah.. wouldn’t it be nice?

Back to the reality here, Lang Lang helped me to call a taxi, I was waiting in the living room taking pictures of the day break. The sunrise in Ushuaia is very beautiful, the pointy mountains made a nice silhouette as the backdrop for the town, the other side is the ocean where the sun come up every morning. Suddenly, Lang Lang asked me how I like to pay for the room, I thought Hotel.com always charged me in advance, so that came kind of a minor surprise. Though I had this experience in Japan once with Booking.com that they actually didn’t charge me, I had to pay at the hotel. So this was not completely new to me, nonetheless just to make sure, I asked to check my credit card statement online. there was no charge found from hotel.com, so I settled the bill, thanks Lang Lang and left. Because the cab driver had been waiting, I forgot to give him a handshake, shoot! But I will give a good reviews for them on various websites for sure when I get back to the states.

Today is pretty much another day in transit, I would first fly to Buenos Aires and change to another flight to Bariloche. The connection is really short, 50 mins no more no less. But it is with the same airline and within the same terminal in BA. So everyone from the airline told me it should be ok. The only things I need to do when I get to Bariloche, is to find Ana, the landlord who rent me her studio apartment. This is my first experience with Airbnb. Hopefully, it will go smooth. I also need to call Ernesto to confirm my paragliding trip tomorrow. When I wrote him an email last week, he said the weather forecast should be fine. I am pretty excited and nervous at the same times about the paragliding trip. More excited I guess. I only hope I won’t pee in my pants.

In Bariloche, I will have a day tour to a remote town called San Martin de los Andes on Thursday, and I will go down to Esquel to take the Patagonian Express on Friday. I really can’t wait. Bariloche is also famous for its chocolate festival, it should be happening during my visit, they will try to build the biggest easter chocolate egg in the world. Too bad I don’t like chocolate, but it will be cool to see it for sure.

Day 4: Lighthouse, Wildlife and Museum

It started to rain late last night, and evidently it rained the whole night. I could hear it because there is a tin roof right outside my window. So, it was dak dak dak dak the entire night. I slept ok, I guess, I did wake up before the alarm came up, not sure if it was the rain or my body was adjusting for the schedule here. Lang Lang told me at breakfast that the forecast says it gonna rain in Ushuaia almost daily, but that is not always true. He said April and May, however, do tend to rain a lot. Nonetheless, when I was done with breakfast, and went out to the pier, the rain stopped. I had my umbrella but I didn’t even get to use it. It was still cloudy, but not terrible.

I got to the pier at 8:20am, the navigation tour wouldn’t start until 9am, I walked around the seaside and came back, there was still nobody, it was almost 5 mins to 9. I wondered if I was at the wrong place, and then I bumped into Samantha. She pointed out that I needed to exchange my tour voucher to a boarding pass at another travel agency (next door to the travel agency I booked the tour). Luckily I bumped into her, otherwise, I would have missed my tour and have to go with the next one. Anyway, we paid the port fee and off we embarked the catamaran.

At the end, we didn’t move for another hour at the dock, but that was ok, maybe they were waiting for another group or waiting for the sun to come out. I was not in a rush, and the cloud did start to break out, and had some faint blue appearing. It worked out just fine. We finally moved around 10am, before the guide finished her descriptions, some insensitive people, (hand raising) including myself, already went outside the deck to take pictures of Ushuaia from a distance. We needed some fresh air anyway. There were lots of Brazilians on the boat, also Uruguayans, some Dutch and Chinese (from Mainland I believe). Our first stop was a tiny rock island with hundreds of birds dotting the island. From a quick glance, they looked like Penguins actually, also in tuxedo colors with a hint of navy blue on the back.

Next we arrived at a small green island where we got off the boat and walk around. Nothing too spectacular at this point. It was ok. I got myself a cafe con leche after I got back on the boat, and we continued to cruise to another island with a bunch of sea lions, all lazy sunbathers, many were baby sea lions, some even seemed to be drinking milk from their moms. By the way, do sea lions have nipples and milk? For which I am not exactly sure, but it looked like it anyway. That was a cool island, the sea lions were howling at each other, with fog coming out from their mouths, I could only imagine how stinky that must be to smell that for the other sea lion. He was probably saying: Oy! fish for dinner last night. Before we even left that island, my eyes had already fixed on the next object in sight, the Les Eclaireurs Lighthouse.

If you have seen the movie Happy Together, you know, there is a lighthouse at the end of the world where you are supposed to leave your secrets. Unlike the movie, you cannot really get on the island or climb the lighthouse. That is unfortunate. Looking at it up close was pretty haunting. I didn’t prepare the record tapes of secrets, nor did I have time to think of one to leave it there, I just kept taking pictures and videos. This is another thing I have wanted to see in Argentina. Box checked! The tour was pretty short, just 2 hours. We came back a few minutes before noon. It was a good cruise, short but have covered all the highlights.

Went to a restaurant called Banana’s and had the menu del dia (menu of the day), which included a creamy soup and variety of breads, a mushroom risotto dish and a coffee. The soup and breads were fantastic, just those two were enough to fill me up. The risotto was far from comparison with the one I had last night, this one was more like a bad mac and cheese. Quite frankly, I didn’t even finish it. The espresso was good. After lunch, I went to a museum complex and saw the exhibitions about maritime, Antarctica expeditions, old time prisons and penguins art. I spent almost 2 hours there. Not on my recommendation list for Ushuaia if you would ever come here, but if you have an afternoon free up and want to kill some times, this museum can be a good choice. No plan for the rest of the evening, just relaxing and catch up with blogs and posting pictures.
 
It is true that Argentina is like an southern European country, it can be Italy or Spain. In my room here, there is a second bowl next to the toilet in the bathroom where you can wash your mmm mmm. Also, the whole in the afternoon shops are closed for a few hours thing, so people can take a nap or something, it is the same here. The coffee cultures and dining habits are also very similar. They even look like Italians and Spaniards to be honest. Sometimes I wonder how that come to be this way, in lower part of South America (Chile and Argentina), people are more like Europeans, while the upper part (Peru upwards) have more mixed blood or indigenous people around. That is kind of an interesting fact.

A minor update to my itinerary. I was talking to Samantha about Iguazu Falls today, she has already been to both Argentinean side and Brazilian side. I was convinced that I will try to get to the Brazilian side if possible. It is supposed to be more beautiful, and turned out my HK passport also does not need a visa to Brazil. But my time there is pretty tight, so we'll see. I can always consult with the B&B when I get there.

Other pictures of Ushuaia:

Wildlife of Ushuaia:

Video: Hey Mr. Penguin

How cute exactly is Mr. Penguin? Let him speak for himself.

Day 3 (Part 2): March with the Penguins

Continued with my Day 3 adventure. One of the planned highlights of this trip is to see the penguin colony. I was so happy that the tour still run, though I later found out that it was one of the last ones for this season, last 2nd day to be exact, because the majority of the penguins had already migrated. Anyhow, we were told that we would still see at least 2 types of the 3 penguins that colonized that island. The road trip to get to the tiny tuxedo men was long, a hour and half on the bus, then we jumped on a small fast boat to the penguin island. The boat ride was about 15 mins or so. It was a private island and only the tour company we went with run this tour apparently. Samantha, the chinese girl I met in the morning was also on this tour, so on the way to the penguins, we talked about travels, various places we visited, exchanging notes about traveling in Argentina and South America in general. That sure made the time go faster.

It was a big tour group, and the group was split into two small groups to go onto the island. I was among the first group to go. The fast boat landed the isolated island, something like you would have seen in a Pirates of the Caribbean... ok, not exactly since there is no penguins in the Caribbean I don’t think. Anyhow, it sure felt like an adventure like that. We had to walk very carefully, in a straight line, since there were a lot of holes on the ground, for which the penguins had dig to lay eggs. Before long, we already saw some penguins ahead of us, we walked towards them, they didn’t seem to mind. They just stood there, head looked up, occasionally yawned, or argued with each other, or sung a song. I believe that the type of penguins we saw was called Pygoscellis papua, and there were also two King penguins among them, the ones with the hint of orange yellow around their necks. Very beautiful. They stood guard-like still, didn’t speak much, very majestic.

Overall, I was disappointed to say the number of penguins were much less than I had envisioned, there maybe 40-50 of them left behind. The guide told us that they counted 6000 pairs of penguins (counted by the holes) on the island during the summer month (maybe just a month ago), that would have been magnificent. Instead of writing a blog about it, I might make a documentary out of this trip. But oh well, I got here, I saw the penguins up close and personal, that is all matters. They were so freaking cute. You could not stop yourself from taking one more picture, very animated, very happy feet, sometimes like a penguin Juliet running to her romeo. To be able to see that, it was priceless. 

There also were some unique birds on the island, they were ok, more like turkey, all I could think of was Thankgiving. The penguins were not as stinky as I thought, maybe they did take a shower once in a while, but I am sure I stepped on more dung-a-dung than ever in my life. Based on the colors of the dung, there were lots of vegans on this island, not a pretty scene. Before I will depart from Ushuaia, I will need to give my shoes a bath, or they wouldn’t let me get on the plane.

After the penguins, we went to a really so-so museum nearby. It is one of those museums you could not really spend more than 5-10 minutes at, one room with a bunch of giant fish bones. It is ok. We waited for the second group to finish, followed by a long road trip back to town. I mean I would still recommend the penguin tour, but one should do it during the summer months here.

For dinner, I did try that king crab risotto in the restaurant that were closed the night before. It was really good. When I got back to the B&B, it was already after 10pm. Wrote a few things down, then I crashed into the bed. That was a good day, it really was!

More sights and sounds of the day: