9 January 2019
Woke up in my beautiful hotel room at Los Cauquenes Resort & Spa in Ushuaia this morning and realised, this is it! After two and a half years of waiting and some pretty big setbacks, we are boarding Ponant’s L’Austral today to begin the adventure of a lifetime. An expedition to Antarctica.
Had a bit of a sleep in, as there have been a lot of early starts on this trip before getting up and having a wonderful breakfast in the hotel restaurant. It’s been so long since I’ve had a bacon sandwich! Checked out of our room and went and had spa treatments. I had a copper facial and Darren had an anti-stress facial. The room I had my facial in was beautiful, with a large picture window overlooking the Beagle Channel. I’ve come a long way from hostels in Morocco I thought to myself.
After indulging ourselves, we asked the hotel to call us a cab to take us to El Tren del Fin del Mundo – the train at the end of the World. The cab driver drove like a maniac and at one point took a corner and drove right in front of an oncoming bus, I though we were going to get wiped out for sure.
Arrived at the little station and bought our tickets, 2100 pesos, which included the ticket into he Tierra del Fuego National Park. It was a bit steep, but how often do you go to the End of the World? The biggest problem was most of it had to be paid in cash and basically wiped out all my pesos, the ATM fees here are insane, about fourteen dollars to get money out each time!
Had a little look in the souvenir shop before boarding the train, there are three, two steam powered and one diesel powered engine. We had one of the steam powered trains. Although we had paid for tourist class seats, we ended up in first anyway, as I don’t think anyone would have thought it worthwhile to upgrade given the already inflated cost.
The train passed through lots of swampy marsh area and many trees which had been felled over a hundred years ago. Ushuaia was first established as a penal colony and the purpose of this train was to ferry the convicts around. It’s the middle of summer here and the temperature is in the single digits Celsius, I can’t imagine what it would be like in the winter. I imagine this would have been the worst place in the world to be incarcerated.
There were horses grazing and the whole area is surrounded by stunning, but formidable snow-covered mountain peaks. The train made one stop at El Macarena station, I had to wait almost the entire fifteen minutes the train was stationery to get a photo with out some tourists fat head in the way.
Continued onto the final destination, Tierra del Fuego station, I was a bit disappointed to not be getting off and exploring, but our time is quite limited here. The engine shunted around the front and took us back to Ushuaia station, the track is 7km and the entire trip took about two hours.
Caught a much safer taxi back to the hotel and had another coffee by the picture window, before our transfer turned up at 3:45pm. When we had come down to Ushuaia town yesterday, another Ponant ship L’Boreal had been in port, Darren bet me $20 that the ship had been changed and we would be taking this one to Antarctica. I had taken the bet and won, as we drove over the crest of the hill and the port came into view, there she sat. Ponant’s L’Austral. The vessel that would carry us through the Drake passage, beyond the Southern Ocean to Antarctica.
Boarding was so easy, the only other ship we had been on was the MSC Divina, the behemoth that had taken us around the Caribbean, where everything was painful owing to having 4100 people on board. Our luggage was immediately taken and placed in our room and we boarded the ship.
Nothing and I mean nothing could have prepared me for the welcome we received when we boarded L’Austral. The entire crew were turned out in their white uniforms and at the end of the line of crew, was Captain Marionneau who shook hands with us and welcomed us personally. We were handed a glass of Veuve and given our room keys. We went and sat at the bar; drinks were flowing freely. After I finished my champagne, the bar tender asked me what I would like to drink, I said “surprise me” and was handed an Old Fashioned, which is was I always seem to get handed when I tell a bar tender to “surprise me”.
Went to check out our cabin, it is just like a floating five-star hotel room. The bathroom is the most impressive with a separate toilet, rain shower (which is an actual shower and not an enclosed cubical) and accessories by Hermes. Our cabin steward came an introduced himself and showed us where everything is.
Attended the welcome briefing in the theatre, when they introduced the captain, he walked out onto the stage while they were playing the theme song to Pirates of the Caribbean. It was amazing. We picked up our included Arctic parkers, which are of superior quality and have a patch on the arm listing all of Ponant’s polar destinations – could this be a new bucket list?
We had dinner in the fine dining restaurant on level 2, the service was amazing. We were clearly the only two people on the ship completely not used to being waited on hand and foot. I had beef soup, veal and then raspberry sorbet for desert. We were also served French champagne, included in the cost of the cruise of course. It is so nice not to have to think about money, and if we can afford to have a drink or a nice meal.
The ship departed as we were having dinner by the window and began cruising through the Beagle Channel. We finished our meal and went back to our cabin to watch the sunset over the ocean from our balcony, we ordered a cheese platter to finish our wonderful day at the end of the World.