Day 11 - Dose of Dogs

Today is our last full day in Ushuaia – we board the ship to Antarctica tomorrow.  Our last day was intended to be relatively mellow – relax, do laundry and maybe visit a local sled dog company.  We also had to move hotels as the Antarctic itinerary officially starts today and we are moving to the tour hotel. 

Our day started by dragging our 800 lbs of luggage about three blocks to our new hotel.  Three blocks in Chicago is nothing.  Three blocks in Ushuaia is a different story.  Nothing is flat. There are steep hills that have combination steps and steep concrete sidewalks – usually side by side so you have a choice.  The steps are not normal even steps, but rather uneven, cracked concrete steps that are either crumbling or in different states of repair or have huge gaps or holes.  The non-hilly streets become an obstacle course of concrete, holes, different patterned tiles – basically, you are not simply rolling your luggage, but dragging, lifting, and praying your wheels don’t snap off.  We eventually got to the new hotel and stored our luggage before meeting Sarah, our travel agent for the Antarctic portion.

Sarah is an American from Seattle who relocated to Ushuaia and was missing some of the comforts of home, so we brought Kona coffee and peanut butter as a thank you for all of her help.  2 packages of coffee and 2 giant jars of Skippy, to be exact - weighing in at roughly 12-15lbs.  This is the most well-traveled peanut butter in history having covered 5 countries over 5 flights… but she was thrilled so it was worth it.

After a quick breakfast, Camila picked me up so we could go get our nails done.  Everyone needs pretty nails to visit Antarctic Penguins!  Damon found us and we all met up with Martin for lunch.  Martin arranged with our 4x4 tour guide from yesterday to drive us to the sled dog place, so that was next on our agenda. 

We miss Thorkey and just needed to love on dogs for a few minutes and this was the right place.  It housed over 140 sled dogs who were all friendly and dying to be loved on and we had free reign to visit with any/all of the dogs.  We made the rounds, visited with the one litter of 4 week old puppies and then drove back to town around 4:30.

We checked into our new hotel and it is fabulous!  Thank you again to Sarah Scott at Freestyle Adventures for hooking us up with a newly renovated suite at the Alto Andino hotel where we had the opportunity to spend our last night on land in luxury and comfort.  

We spent the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out our laundry situation and as there are no self-serve places in town, we ultimately found a place that, for $20, would wash and dry our 8.5kgs of laundry and have it ready by 10am tomorrow since we have to drop off our luggage at the ship by 11.

We did spend the afternoon lying around in our super comfy bed watching Supernatural, went out for Empanadas at 8:30, and then chilled in the hotel.

Tomorrow.