Day 13, 23rd March – Back at world’s end Ushuaia
Another early morning (the final morning) on the Plancius – it may be the last day but time and tide waits for no marine biologist! We hoped to squeeze in one final bird survey as we pulled alongside the pier in Ushuaia, but sadly it was too dark still to do so before we had to start emptying our cabins and settle down to one final breakfast on board. More than one of us noted a weird paradoxical feeling of the expedition seeming to have flown by, yet the first day on board seeming almost a distant memory. With a few croissants quietly secreted about our persons, we were soon saying our farewells to the crew and ‘ol Planky and then we were back on terra firma. This in itself was quite a strange feeling – though we had been ashore on Antarctica a few times, these were always relatively fleeting visits before return to the Plancius. In contrast, by the time we had made it to our hotel rooms and started unpacking, a few people felt rather odd without a swaying vessel beneath their feet – almost land-sick. It seems that even subconsciously we weren’t quite ready to leave the Southern Ocean!
During the afternoon, some students decided to go and see the glacier near Ushuaia (because clearly they hadn’t seen enough in Antarctica!). Thank goodness for Diego – without a Spanish speaker the taxi journey there may have been a little bit tricky. After an hour’s walk, the glacier high above Ushuaia was reached. Far below the rest of the expedition were continuing to explore Ushuaia, sending some last-minute postcards and doing a bit of gift-buying. This task was somewhat inconvenienced by the extended Argentine four-day holiday, but there are plenty of places to go in the world’s most southerly city.
Later in the day, some time was spent with Lars and Sonja exploring and cleaning up our survey data, as well as allowing for discussion of possible directions to take our projects. We have a huge amount of data and wouldn’t all be using every bit of it, but for both educational purposes and interests sake it was worth going through the motions with everyone. A few interesting projects were suggested and discussed, but ultimately the final product would be unique to each individual. Once the data was sorted and tidied up, most of us took a well-earned soak and recuperation in the spa – a difficult life doing this biology malarkey! Following this, the hunt for pizza began – a critical part of the day as even Dominoes apparently wouldn’t deliver south of the Magellan Strait. After a good knees-up, we soon collapsed into our beds, with unsettling dreams of rocking boats and whale sightings in every direction.
James Rimmer (MSc EMMS)
