Each night Martin would write on the whiteboard - which was conveniently outside our room - a schedule of the next morning. This was what he had written before hearing the news ... When we got up we noticed that the boat wasn’t moving. We soon found out why. One of the engines wasn’t functioning. After breakfast we gathered in the lounge for a briefing. A very serious briefing, explaining that we could not proceed with our journey due to the engine fault. There were not many dry eyes amongst us but everyone was accepting and remained stoic. From then on for most of the rest of the day we spent trying to work out what to do next, checking our insurance cover, deciding if we could pick up a berth on another vessel going to Antartica and wandering aimlessly around the boat trying to come to terms with what we had just heard. We did spend some worthwhile time enjoying the environment, bird spotting etc Cormorants This tiny dot is a seal jumping out of the water Black-Browed Albatross Tejal...
The mountains had lots of snow on the hills behind us as it had snowed the day previous to our arrival. We just can't stop taking photos of the amazing views from the hotel. Dave came up to meet us while we were at breakfast and we started making plans for the next 2 days - hopeful that we could spend some time together before the big trip. Heidi and Dave went in search of hire cars but there were none available we then all met Anna in the Ramos Generales to continue our plan-making. We took TAXIs along the road beside the channel to Reserva Cultural Natural Playa Larga and headed out for our walk towards Estancia Tunel. The walk was beautiful. When we had gotten as far as we were going to walk we stopped to eat the Vegan wraps that we had found in Ushuaia. On our return Linda had taken a different fork than the rest of us - thinking that we were returning the same way that we had come - so Heidi stopped to find her while Tejal went ahead to catch up with the others to let them...
We took our time this morning as we believed, having checked yesterday, that we were being picked up at 9 to be driven to El Chalten. However, we hadn’t even finished breakfast when a man came towards us calling my name. It was our driver!! So we had to abandon breakfast, rush upstairs to finish packing, check out of the hotel, and board the bus. We were the first to be picked up so we at least got seats at the front. The driver spent quite a while driving around to the various different accommodation venues picking people up. We were then on our way to El Chalten past our hotel at about the time that we were told that we would be collected! An interesting drive with ever-changing features, the countryside is quite barren with no trees but with mountains, valleys, rivers that we crossed a few times, lakes, and the occasional wildlife - guanaco, deer, rhea. The road surface was in good condition and the roadside was fenced all the way. A thing of note was that there was no li...
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