travel – Page 18 – RVing With a Purpose

Antarctica Adventure: Second Day In Ushuaia

Sunday, February 2, 2025

January 14 was our second day in Ushuaia. For those new to our blog, we and Barry and Donna have traveled to a lot of places and had some wonderful experiences. A few things seem to always occur when we are together. Hiking and or biking, ice cream, doughnuts and generally, good food. So, it should not be surprising that we investigated these favorite items before our travels to Argentina. We learned that the local culture dictated late dinners. Many locals eat dinner at 8pm or later and many restaurants don’t open until 8pm or later and most restaurants serve dinner until about midnight. Also, most breakfast restaurants don’t open until about 8 or maybe 9am. Although we were tired, on the way back from our dinner of empanadas last night, we spotted a pastry shop – actually several. We spotted one (and the only one we saw the entire trip) that opened at 7am. Guess you know where we were at 7am, after a good night’s sleep. Ushuaia is a beautiful city and we had no time to waste. We had a busy plan of exploring for the day. We purchased some delightful fresh pastries at 7:15am and returned to the Airbnb for breakfast. Then it was time to begin our self-guided walking tour of the town. Remember, it is summer in the southern hemisphere. There were beautiful flowers everywhere. The birds were very active. It was a wonderful day of sunshine, blue skies and moderate temperatures – high about 60. Hope you enjoy the pictures. For lunch we went to a YouTuber recommended place for fried empanadas. Even better than the night before!

Ushuaia is a very walkable town but you have to be careful because most intersections do not have stop or yield signs.

Some of the summer flowers we saw in town

We stopped in a grocery store and found they sell milk in bags …

… and many other items in squeeze tubes or bags that we usually see in jars and cans.

In Argentina, most packaged foods are required to have some kind of health warning labels like “excess sugar, excess fats, and excess calories.”

Then we took a 20 minute Uber to the trailhead of Laguna Esmeralda, a 5.4 mile round trip hike in the Fuego Nature Reserve. The scenery was incredible. Pictures really cannot do it justice. We hiked across two valleys of glacial origin, and then climbed up to a lagoon of emerald, green water. We saw a number of birds we had never seen before. We had rain on and off, so the trail was pretty muddy at places but the beauty all around was so worth the effort. Fantastic day!

The trail surface was some hard packed dirt …

… some boardwalks across the wettest areas …

The payoff for our hike was a view of Laguna Esmeralda – Emerald Lagoon.

Antarctica Adventure: Have You Ever Heard Of Ushuaia?

February 1, 2025

Wow! Didn’t realize it would be so long when we posted our last entry. So… let’s catch up. On January 1st we began our drive back to South Carolina with an overnight stop in Shorter, AL. It was great to be back with Randy and Debra for a while. We spent the next week visiting and packing and repacking suitcases. We hadn’t tackled this chore since our trip on the polar bear photography expedition in 2022. This next trip would be considerably further and require considerably more cold weather clothing. We decided it was much easier just to travel in Fred and take all our stuff with us. However, this next trip was not possible in Fred. Decisions, Decisions on what to pack. Next destination: ANTARCTICA via Alabama.

We departed SC on January 9, arriving in Oneonta, AL in time to purchase our auto tags. Crazy as it sounds, there was a winter storm predicted for Blount County, so Barry, Donna and the two of us decided to stay at a hotel closer to the Birmingham Airport for a couple nights. After all the planning we did NOT want to miss our Sunday morning flight. Pine Mountain is notorious for ice after a storm. There was snow and ice by Friday morning. We were able to return to Barry and Donna’s house for Saturday night even though there was still some ice on the roads. Sunday, January 12th, we flew out of Birmingham, of course to Atlanta, and then a nonstop flight to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Our Atlanta flight was delayed about 2-3 hours due to all the weather issues, but, otherwise, was uneventful. Next was an airport change, 45 min Uber from the international airport to the domestic airport, and then a flight from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia, Argentina, also known as the End of the World or Fin del Mundo. We left Barry and Donna’s house about 9:00 am Sunday and did not arrive at our Airbnb in Ushuaia until Monday evening, January 13, about 32 hours later.

What we woke up to at the motel on Friday morning

Finally at the Birmingham airport

In Buenos Aires, instead of walking out a ramp to the airplane door, we took a bus to the tarmac …

… then get out and walked up the steps to board the plane.

We were near the very southern tip of South America. The view from the rooftop of our Airbnb was nice, with a view of the harbor where our ship would be docked. We could relax because now we would certainly be able to make the ship embarkation on time. Ushuaia is the capital of Tierra del Fuego, Antarctica, and South Atlantic Islands. Exploration would have wait until after some sleep. We did walk to a restaurant to try our first Argentinian meal. Between our little knowledge of Spanish and our waiter’s little knowledge of English, we managed to order some wonderful empanadas. Next – sleep.

As we checked into our Airbnb, we looked out and saw this rainbow over Ushuaia.

Donna had been reading about Ushuaia and found that one of the popular foods here is empanadas. So we immediately went walking to find them.

Merry Christmas – 2024

December 25, 2024

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO All!!!

We hope you and your family have had a wonderful Christmas season. We pray that in the middle of all the hustle and bustle you have taken time to remember what is really important. And it’s not just that it’s Jesus’ birthday. We are celebrating the Wonderful Counselor, Almighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace coming to earth. It’s the beginning of The Story, the fulfillment of prophecy. If you have been too busy, this evening would be a great time to sit down, take a deep breath and maybe pick up your Bible and read the Christmas story again.

We have spent our “vacation time” resting, reading, catching up on some work, working puzzles and watching Christmas movies. There have been lots of beach walks, and bike rides, eagle sightings and lots of good food. Most importantly God has blessed us by allowing us to spend this time listening to Advent devotions and enjoying the beauty He created here.

Our campsite this year

This heron has been a daily visitor to our campsite

We have taken several walks on the beach even though some days have been quite cool.

For most of last week the purple flags were out at the beach meaning that venomous sea life was present. They really weren’t needed because it was too cold to get in the water.

The pier is open again so we can walk on it any time. Since we are staying in the park, we don’t have to pay to walk it.

We see sharks every time we walk on the pier.

We attended a park presentation on raptors and got to see Archimedes the screech owl.

Of course, we have made several trips to the eagle nests. Yesterday we finally caught both of them on the nest at the same time.

On one of our hikes we stopped to watch this osprey eating a fish.

These grilled steaks fed us for a couple of days.

One day we took the afternoon to make Aunt Inez’s Tea Cake cookies.

We made them bite-sized this time because they are easier to eat on travel days. They probably will not survive another whole week to our next travel day.

Believe it or not, we actually worked our Advent puzzle the way it was intended – one small section at a time. We have really enjoyed it.

We tried a new recipe for for breakfast today – cinnamon rolls baked with eggnog.

Our traditional Christmas dinner of snow crab legs

As we have the last few years we took the time to watch our favorite Christmas movie again.

Balloons and Trees

Thursday, October 24, 2024

After leaving Selma, on our way to South Carolina we made a too brief stop to visit Anne’s brother south of Atlanta. We had a great time visiting some sights around Peachtree City, sharing meals and catching up.

City Hall Fountain in Peachtree City. The tubes gradually fill with water, then tip forward and spill the water.

Since we arrived at Max’s brother’s house we have been enjoying our time here catching up and clearing trees downed by Hurricane Helene.

One of many trees down at Max’s brothers house. We were actually very blessed that none of the trees fell on the house or on our motorhome that was parked there.

The tree in the picture above pushed to the right-of-way for pickup

The four of us did take a weekend camping trip to North Carolina to see the Carolina BalloonFest in Statesville. We camped at Blake Farms RV Resort which is a small family-owned campground. There are large full hookup gravel sites, a short hiking trail, and all the miniature golf you want to play – at no charge. There is also a general store. We recommend it to anyone needing a campground in the Statesville area.

Our campsites at Blake Farms RV Resort

Saturday was our day to spend at the BalloonFest. We were up early to be able to see the first balloons go up at about 7:30. There were about 25 balloons in the morning flight and there was a competition to see which pilot could drop their streamers closest to the center mark. Later in the day there was a mass ascension of balloons and later still there was an evening glow. It was a day of great fun. We particularly enjoyed the special shape balloons.