Day 264: Ushuaia – Argentina – Mar 8th

After spending a day on the bus traveling to Ushuaia, we got some much needed rest and even cooked ourselves a meal at the hostel! It’s nice to eat something ‘at home’ instead of eating out, and you get to save a few bucks too!

Everything is set for our upcoming cruise, so we had a spare day to visit the Tierra del Fuego national park. It was either this, or go gambling at the casino…. easy choice! The national park is rather large, and had numerous hiking trails in addition to camp sites for use. We chose to do the ‘coastal’ hike, where we were hiking along the shore line of some salt water channel, and along with the vegetation it definitely reminded us a bit of home.

One of the coolest part though, was at the start of the hike, there’s this tiny little house situated above a small wooden dock extending into the water, and the sign says: “Correo”, or Post Office in Spanish! Inside is a small hut barely large enough for 2 people, but this is one of the most charming little post offices we’ve seen! It sells amazingly beautiful special edition stamps about the region, and some really pretty postcards. The best part, is that the post office is run by the most charming postal worker you can imagine, complete with a mustache that twirls upwards! He’s got a hundred different stamps that he fills your postcards with once you’re done writing them, and he’s even got postcards/stamps that are designed for him!!! He’s a living postal relic! It was all great fun, and we’ve never spent so much money on postage but it was well worth’d.

Oh, the hike within the Tierra del Fuego national park was great. Tranquil waters with a backdrop of mountains, that’s always hard to beat. Again, pictures don’t do this place justice and neither are our words, but we’ll try.

Dinner was some delicious home made pasta along with a bottle of wine. We also did our shopping to prep us for our big trip, just in case we get hungry aboard the m/v Plancius…. on our way to ANTARCTICA!!! Yeah!!!