Day 3, 13th March – An early start and off we set to the airport.
Travelling now into the temperate south of the country, long trousers and fleeces replaced the shorts and T-shirts – the beginnings of a gradual process of layering up. However, trouble was brewing. About an hour into our flight, an announcement came over informing us that our flight was turning around due to a ‘technical fault’. Not exactly the news we wanted to hear – those on the windows had a glance down at the wing, no-doubt to double-check that the duct-tape was still holding. Fortunately, we were quickly back in the air and back on our way to Ushuaia. Tierra del Fuego lay below us, an utterly stunning landscape of mountains and the Beagle channel we would soon be sailing down, marking the Argentine-Chilean border in this remote archipelago. Our late arrival gave us limited time to explore Ushuaia that day, though we had a brief tour on the way to our hotel (a rather comfortable one, I might add) and ideas of where to explore the next day and on our return. Now that we had met-up with Sonja, we were able to have our first proper expedition meeting and dinner in town, though all the travelling and early mornings drove us to an early bed. The next day we would be boarding the Plancius and beginning the final leg of our journey to the frozen, southern continent. Now, where did I put my seasickness tablets….?
James Rimmer, MSc EMMS
