Day 10. The alarm goes off at 4:00am and Todd gets dressed quietly and adjourns to the balcony, camera and binoculars in tote, wrapped up warmly to barely beat the sunrise by 5 minutes. There are no stunning sunrise pictures as there was a low cloud cover. The captain says that we are to pass 2 big glaciers this morning. The first one should be shortly after 5:00. The captain’s time frames have been quite a bit off before so Todd decides not to chance missing anything this morning as we cruise at about 11 knots through the Beagle Canal. It is 4:45 when we come to the first one. Todd knocked on the window to wake Denise so that she wouldn’t miss it either. It wouldn’t be until later that we discovered that the glaciers we saw this morning were all the same one. It is one giant glacier and we were just catching glimpses of its edges. Since we don’t arrive in our next port, Ushuaia, until 10:00am we have a little time to rest, get the frisky going and eat leisurely. Ushuaia is the southernmost city in the world. It sits on Tierra del Fuego, or Land of Fire. In the 1500s when Ferdinand Magellan was charting the Strait of Magellan, he marveled at the many fires lit at night by the aboriginal Indians inhabiting the land and named it after this. In the 1800s Argentina built a prison in Ushuaia in order to better establish its claim to the land. Ushuaia is pronounced “oo-shoo-WHY-uh”. Most departures to Antarctica leave from this port. This National Geographic cruise line ship is probably going there next. There is a lot to see and do here. We have chosen to take a bus up into Tierra del Fuego National Park for the day. We believe we have deciphered the chaos of the wait for tours in the theater. We have ended up first in line to leave the ship for our tour bus. When we get on the bus there are 2 Croatian women who have reserved the first 10 seats with purses, hats, coats and scarves. How did they get here already? Over the course of this tour we would relearn why there was a cold war. We try to ignore them but we can’t even get a decent picture of the sign without them standing in front of it. Finally Todd gets a shot and takes it fast. Only 1 Croatian; best we’re going to get. And it’s not just the Croatians. Did we forget to mention that our shadow friends from the Norwegian Sun are with us today? Just too many people really. During our hours in the park we focus on a whole world of beauty. There are gorgeous streams:

A post office on the coast… Magnificent trees and mountains… Striking plant life… Great campgrounds… Unique vegetation… Curious bridges… And wide open fields. The Croatian squad begins to sing very loudly and poorly in Russian. They are dreadfully obnoxious. Ushuaia is known as “Fin del Mundo”, or the end of the world. The bus brings us back to the port. We get out and get in line to go through the first terminal. The Croatian Hooligans go right to the front of the line and push through. We tell each other that we are glad that we do not live in a society where you have to act like that to get anywhere. Once through the first terminal building we slow down and go window shopping at a few of the stores here on the pier. We see a penguin sculpture very much like the one we paid $5 USD yesterday. We ask the price of it. Time blurs for a while. We pick our jaws back up and reattach them. The price for these penguins in Argentina works out to near $50 USD! We wonder if we are going to miss the Chilean prices for the remainder of our trip. We settle in and take pictures of the Sailboats going by… and the airplanes as we enjoy some homemade pisco sour knockoffs. We are a little late for dinner and are pleased to find Carlos and Aura there tonight. Come to find out, there have been some being-tired issues sprinkled with health issues. It’s good to see them as we enjoy our meal again with them - talking the whole way through and sharing some more wine. They had a busy day walking along the waterway, so they won’t be doing anything after dinner. We are not ready to quit though, even with getting up at 4:00. We return to the cabin to find our evening’s towel creation and take a moment of silence for the great Crocodile Hunter and drink more pisco. We have one little stop to make this evening as we are crossing back from Argentinean waters to Chilean waters. We have to stop in Port Williams and be boarded for about ½ hour. Then we are back on our way.
It is now 11:00 and we make our way to the cigar bar, the Hollywood Club, where we spend the rest of our evening. The Radiance of the Seas band is playing jazz there tonight. They are cooking and we are having yet another evening of EXPENSIVE drinks along with the most wonderful cigars Todd has ever smoked. We make friends with the Philipino waiter who helped pick out the cigars. We tip him well at the end of the evening so we can have one more great evening and count on the service. It is after 1:00am when we get back to the room. We wonder why we aren’t tired as we fall right to sleep.