Day 16 snapshots

We began our touristing of Ushuaia today. While we had slept on solid ground, we had both awakened in the night thinking that we had felt the tell-tale rocking motion of the ship where we had spent eleven days. It would be several days before we could shake that feeling.

Our first visit was to the Ushuaia Maritime Museum where among other models was this replica of the H.M.S. Beagle. Ushuaia is situated on the Beagle Channel, which is named after this ship on which Charles Darwin was a passenger when he visited the Galapagos Islands.

Our next museum was the former provincial prison. The prison functioned as a penal colony for Argentina, housing both common criminals as well as political prisoners in the first half of the 20th century.

Here, a guard keeps a watchful eye on both the inmates and visitors.

This prisoner in his yellow and black wool awaits an event which—for him—will never come.

In the afternoon, we walked to the west of our hotel. Our hotel was to the west of town, so we were well away from the center of town and away from what most tourists saw.

We would guess from what we saw that Tierra del Fuego is more than a location for foreign tourists. It seems to have houses that are summer and winter vacation homes for those Argentineans who live to the north. On our walk, we saw several medium-sized cottages, many buildings and houses under suspended construction, larger custom homes with huge plate glass windows for viewing such expansive scenes as the last shot taken southeast from a bay along the Beagle Channel. The channel is lined by mountain peaks offering splendid and ever changing vistas.

For those who might be interested, there are still quite a few lots available for purchase.