Fishing for Barn Doors & Lingcod

We got up in plenty of time to find our boat. We ate a good breakfast and got our fishing licenses and our derby tickets just in case we got lucky and got a big barn door halibut. The boat was called the Ivory Queen and the captain, Trevor, was a very nice guy that knew his fishing. We motored out of the harbor and headed north. Our first stop was going to hopefully be for some giant lingcod.

I thought there were fish everywhere in Alaska so I was surprised that it was a long run to our first fishing spot. It took somewhere close to four hours to get there. We got ready to fish a fast moving tide along a reef close to the shore of an island. We must have been doing somewhere between 5 and 7 knots of drift. I threw over a large white knife jig that weighed about 18 ounces and was about fifteen inches long. It sank to the bottom and I felt it touch so I reeled up a bit to keep from snagging it and I was hit immediately. I just started to bring it up real slow and easy. The fish never tried to run or dive. It just slowly swam up to the surface and the captain gaffed it as soon as it hit the surface. Bam 65 pound lingcod on the deck after two minutes of fishing. We went around for another drift and I dropped it in again. This time nothing and at the end of the drift the captain said bring em up so I did. Just as it reached the surface another big ling came following it up. I stopped reeling and gave it some slack line to let the lure flutter down a bit then I reeled hard to entice the big fish to bite. It worked and the ling took the lure. I reeled in about ten turns and the captain gaffed it. Bam Bam two big ass twin 65 pound lingcod on deck and we were only five minutes into fishing. Alaska is hot for fishing I was thinking. We went around for another drift and as I went to drop the captain told me that I was done fishing because I already had a limit. He told me I had to stop fishing. What? I argued for a minute but he was the captain and he knew the rules not me so I reluctantly stopped fishing and watched the other three anglers work the reef. We did several more drifts and nobody else got any fish. One of the guys tried the jig that I caught mine on and lost it as soon as it hit the bottom. Such is life.

The other anglers got tired of the difficult fishing conditions and decided that they would rather go fish for big butts. Yeah. I got to fish again. We went to a different location near a river mouth and dropped our gear into the water along with a big chum bag to attract the fish. It wasn't long before we started to catch some smaller halibut around 20-30 pounds, called chickens. No barn doors so the captain moved us to a few more locations and all we got was more chickens. A thirty pound halibut is only a disappointment in Alaska, anywhere else it is a great fish to catch. I wasn't disappointed. One of the other guys finally hooked into something heavier and the fight was on After about ten minutes though the hook pulled and we were back to catching chickens. That was it for that day and we headed back to the harbor.

After dropping my fish off at the processor, we headed out to find some dinner and fun. We ate a nice meal in a cafe then bar hopped with some friends for a few hours. There was live music that I really enjoyed listening to by a band called Twitching Sushi. They were local musicians but they were very entertaining and fun. I enjoyed myself but we were fishing again early the next day so I called it a night and we went back to the hotel to catch some sleep.

The next day of fishing was for halibut. The tide was huge and it was tough to keep our gear on the bottom without tangles. We were working an area and then trying a new area. I finally had some harder pull on one of my fish and after a short fight I landed a 75 pound butt. Not a barn door but still the largest halibut I ever caught. I again caught its twin about a half hour later. My friend caught an interesting fish that looked like a bright pink striped tiger. The beautiful colors on the rockfish started to fade right after he caught it. This type of fish is generally only found in much deeper water so not many of them are ever caught. Otherwise we were just catching and releasing smaller halibuts.

We saw lots of big salmon sharks so I put out a rig with a whole salmon carcass as a bait. I fished it for hours and got nothing at all. Finally our fishing time was up and we headed back in to the harbor. I enjoyed fishing with our captain and he brought his cute wife the second day also. They were fun to talk to. They had big ambitions and liked to talk about their plans. I wish I was still young and full of hope and ambition like they were. We had a good time and had lots of fish to send back home but I never got my big barn door. Maybe next time.

We drove around Homer and looked at the boats used for crabbing in the dry docks. Boats from the TV show were there like Time Bandit and several others. Then we had an all you can eat king crab feast before going out on the town with friends again. This time there was more live music at a different bar. They had a different name but it was the same musicians as the other night playing a slightly different type of music. The entire same group of customers and fans from the night before were at this bar tonight. They were like band groupies following them around from bar to bar.

Most of the bars we went to the men and women hung out separately for the most part. I thought that was kind of strange and I asked the people about it. It turned out that almost all the girls were lumberjack lesbians according to the men sitting around the bar by themselves. The men complained bitterly that there were no straight girls around for them to interact with. I thought that maybe it ws the guys so I went and talked to the girls and they told me that almost all of them were not interested in men at all, especially the macho men at the bar. I had to laugh at the disparity of the two groups but I could see why they weren't interacting very much. Any straight girls looking for men should go up to Alaska because there is definitely a shortage up there of eligible women for the guys.

I drove back up to Anchorage when my time was up in Homer. The drive back was uneventful and I drove straight to the airport and flew back to San Francisco. My fish arrived a couple of days later and I had to scramble to find people to take some because there was way more than I could ever store in my little freezer. It sure was tasty.

Homer Alaska

I took a trip to Alaska because I had already been to all 49 other states and Alaska was one place I knew I would love. After my trip to Patagonia where everyone kept saying it looked just like Alaska I just had to go to Alaska. I booked the trip even before I left Argentina.

I flew to Anchorage on Alaska Airlines and rented a pickup truck at the airport so that I could haul my fishing tackle and bring back some fish if I wanted to. I spent the first night in Anchorage at an inexpensive hotel so that I could take all day driving down to Homer the next day. I drove around Anchorage for about an hour to get my bearings for the place and to see what was there. It was a fairly small place without much of a downtown. I went into a bar restaurant to eat and have a couple of beers.

The bar was crowded for as early in the night as I was there. I was still used to everything starting late from living in Argentina. I sat at the bar and ordered a beer. The guys next to me started to talk to me right away. When I told them I was here to go fishing we talked about where and how for about an hour. It was entertaining. All the females in the bar were playing pool or video games or something and the men and women seemed to be totally uninterested in each other. I thought that was kind of strange. I went back to my hotel alone and had an early night after I ate some king crab legs for dinner.

In the morning I headed south after a nice big breakfast. The road was mostly deserted which kind of surprised me. When I first came over a small rise and saw the coastline I immediately saw a pod of beluga whales playing just off the shore. I pulled over to watch them for a while with a couple of other cars of tourists also stopping to watch. I really felt like I was in Alaska now. The mountains jutting up on the horizon across the inlet and the whales playing totally reminded me of Patagonia. The two places have so many similarities it is weird. I brought pictures from Patagonia and I pulled them out to look at them. I could almost line up the mountains in the distance with the ones in my picture and they were 18,000 miles apart.

I got back in the truck and continued my drive to Homer. The road mostly followed the coastline through a few small towns. I was constantly on the lookout for wildlife and I finally spotted what I was looking for. There was a moose standing in a wet lowland area up to its shoulders in water chomping on dripping plants from the boggy area. It was a classic image of a moose. I looked at it for a few minutes and hit the road again. It was the only one I saw on the whole trip. It was open season on moose at the moment and they knew it I guess. I saw a few dead ones in the back of trucks with their huge spread of antlers taking up almost the entire bed of the truck. I only ever saw heads in the trucks. So I presume they field dress them and cut them up into pieces that can be carried out and only keep the head for mounting purposes. Moose are big. I would not want one to charge me at their size.

I saw lots of people fishing along the rivers I crossed. I stopped to watch a few times and saw lots of fish being caught. I could see the salmon in the rivers just standing by the road. Around the middle of the Kenai I watched lots of drift boats working the river. There were not many nets flying while I watched but there were a lot of boats crowding into the small river. I kept driving and finally arrived in Homer. I easily found my hotel with my google directions and stopped to check in. I went in to the office and got in line. When I looked around I was startled to see my son's best friend standing there to check in. I started to talk to him and we were amazed to find out that we had made our reservations for our trips separately but ended up in the same hotel, on the same boat, on the same days. We decided to just get one hotel room so we could hang out together and save some money. What are the odds to meet your son's best friend and to have the same itinerary like we did.

We checked into the hotel and headed out on the town. My friend knew people here in Homer and we headed out to meet up with them. It was nice to have some locals to hang out with. First we drove over to see where our boat left from so that we could find it early the next morning. We watched some people fishing for salmon in a little pond near the marina. They seemed to be catching quite a few salmon so we decided to try it ourselves. We could not get a bite but those around us kept landing fish. Finally I went over to see what their secret was and they shared their fishing style right away. We changed our style to match theirs and got some fish finally. We also fished out at the end of the spit for a few hours. We caught some cod and other fish there just for fun. Then we hit the bars for a short drink before we went to bed early. The Salty Dog Saloon was a blast to see after hearing about it from so many of my friends over the years. It is a classic bar in Homer with dollar bills stuck to the ceiling from past visitors. The next morning was going to be our first time ever fishing for barn door halibut in Alaska so we made it an early night. We were both excited to get out on the water.

Recovering around San Francisco

I arrived back in the Bay Area from Argentina in pretty bad shape. I slowly recovered to a point where I regained some mobility. I could walk a short distance again and function in public without constant overwhelming depression. I started to fish a lot around the Bay and along the Pacific coast as far as to the Farallon Islands. I bought a small boat and started to fish a few times a week to try to break my way out of the depressive slump my chronic pain was causing. It helped a lot to keep as busy as I could.

I love to fish around the San Francisco area. There is great halibut fishing in and out of the Bay. There is salmon fishing that used to be awesome but is rapidly declining. The rockfish and Ling cod are always around during their season. My favorite of them all is when the albacore come close enough to fish for. I have had some seriously epic days on the water for albacore. I fished with Kurt on the New Salmon Queen one day and I caught 22 albacore from 25 to 40 pounds in under three hours. I was landing one every eight minutes on average. I even fished with a bare hook and still hooked up immediately that day. My arms were like jelly for days after all the mad reeling for the hard fighting albacore. I gave almost all of the tuna away to senior centers and my poor neighbors but anybody I knew that liked to eat tuna got plenty of it. None of it went to waste, that is for sure.

I had some great halibut days also. One day I caught a 42 pounder, a 36 pounder and a 29 pounder all in one short span of four hours. I fished in a halibut tournament with some of my friends on my boat and we took four of the five places including first, second, fourth, and fifth place. I fished frequently for halibut because it was a less demanding physical type of fishing and it really helped to distract me from my pain issues. I took lots of other people out fishing. I loved to take out new inexperienced people and kids and get them hooked on fishing. Fishing is a better past time than gang banging on the streets which is what some of the kids I took out were into. Some of my friends thought I was crazy to take out hardcore kids but I enjoyed doing it. One of the fishing clubs I was in regularly took a group of hardcore teens out fishing. The group that organized it and worked with the kids was called FLY. Look them up and donate some money to them if you can, they are a very good organization that really does help the kids it works with. We normally took about fourteen kids out at a time. I enjoyed watching them transform from the tough gangbanger looking punks into smiling giggling kids again when they caught some fish. Our society is doing these kids a real disservice by not allowing kids to be kids. They have to act tough and grown up at too early of an age now. They are kept in large groups of same age peers and there is so much pressure on them to be cool they can't just enjoy life and grow up peacefully like we all need to.


Owning a boat was a lot of fun and it helped me catch a lot of fish but it was just too expensive for me to keep it. I ended up selling it when fuel hit $6.50 a gallon at the marina. I returned to fishing with other boat owners or shore and pier fishing. Around the Fourth of July there are a lot of batrays in the bay and I enjoyed fishing for them. They can be over a hundred pounds. I would take kids down to the Berkeley pier to fish for them. I brought large heavy duty rods and reels with heavy duty line like 60 pound test. Using squid for bait I could get a batray on the hook usually in less than ten minutes. I had one kid that thought he was really a tough guy that I took down and set him up for big batrays. He mouthed off about how he could catch a five hundred pounder because he was such a good fisherman. He was lipping off big time. About three minutes after I threw out the squid the line started to slowly move out. I told him to set the hook and he arrogantly picked up the rod and walked back from the railing of the pier and yanked the rod tip way back. Instantly the big ass ray took off and he went flying back to the rail and the rod was pinned against the rail with line peeling out and the clicker screaming. He turned to me and yelled for help. I tried not to laugh but I just could not keep a straight face seeing his helpless expression three minutes after his bravado display about his toughness. I loosened up the drag and let the fish run until the 800 yards of line was almost gone. Then I tightened it up a bit and made him work the big batray back to the pier. There was a big crowd watching him by now and he was doing pretty good getting the line back until his arms started to cramp up about 45 minutes into the fight. I helped him so that he could rest his arms for a while. Then when it got closer I gave it back to him to bring it up so that he could see the size of it. We looked at it over the rail as about 30 to 40 people crowded to the rail for a look. Then I just cut the line so the ray could swim away. The kid was exhausted but elated. I think I got him hooked that night.

Buenos Aires to San Francisco

After my trips to Iguazu Falls and Patagonia I settled back into my apartment in Recoleta and hung out around town. I had friends come over for dinner or we went out for dinner if we could stay awake late enough to eat at typical Argentina dinner time of 11pm or later. I went to some Tango restaurant/clubs. They are pretty popular with the locals and the tourists. They always had lessons early in the evening for those who wanted to learn to tango. I was too mobility impaired to get into the physical demands of serious tango dancing so I just watched. I like the tango music and the drama on the faces of the dancers. Some of them were really talented and got a serious workout while they were dancing. Lots of hours of practice showed and some of these dancers danced every day for hours on end.

I was having some fun. There was only one problem, my health. I got some dental work done that took me a few visits. The quality was good and the price was cheap for the dental work. The dental work slowed me down for a day or two here and there. It was not my biggest problem though as the dental work would pass and be over with. I was having pain issues though, especially early in the morning and at night when I tried to sleep. I was getting worse by the day and it was becoming intolerable. I was less and less able to walk around town to do my daily rounds. I needed to take taxis more often to get here and there. Then I just lost my mobility completely one morning. I had nobody to take care of me so I struggled along on my own. Sometimes it sure pays to have some family around and I had none here. My friends were casual fair weather friends and I did not want to ask them for help. I took my morphine and rested. It is very important not to just wallow in the pain. I had to get up and try to walk even if it was difficult or I would never be able to dig my way out of this downward spiral of pain and depression. The depression follows the pain without fail. For a few weeks I tried to manage but finally I just gave up and decided to go back home to the states. I talked to my land lady and she agreed to let me out of my lease without a penalty because I was feeling so bad. I actually found somebody t take over my apartment so she was out nothing. I booked a flight back to San Francisco and spent the next few days trying to get my stuff packed for the trip. I hired a taxi driver to come up to my apartment and carry my things all the way to the airline check in counter. He was very nice and I paid him well for his effort.

I made it to the front of the line and started to check in. The woman on the other side of the counter looked at me for a minute then she walked away for a minute and came back to tell me that I wasn't going to be allowed to fly because I looked to unhealthy for the long flight back to San Francisco. I tried to argue with her but it was to no avail and she called security. I talked to them but without a doctors release I was not going to be allowed to fly. I asked them to help me get out to the taxi stand which they did and I called my taxi driver friend again. He quickly came and got me. I had him take me to the hospital where I thought I would be able to get a quick doctor's release and maybe still get on my flight that day.

The hospital was very good to me. They got me in to see a doctor right away. I explained my situation to him and he examined me. I thought he would give me my release but instead he refused to write me one. I tried to argue but he was adamant in not giving me one. He sent me for imaging and set up a multi-specialty group of doctors to come and look at the images and to check me out together. They were very nice and very thorough in their exam. Their conclusion was not what I wanted to hear. They wanted to do surgery on me. I argued against the surgery and they relented but told me I had to take a bunch of anti-inflammatories and muscle relaxers until I was in less pain before they would let me fly. I had no choice but to comply. For three weeks I was at the hospital every day and I was in a hotel across the street at night. I slowly improved enough so that I did not look as obviously in pain as I did at the airport and the doctor wrote my release to fly. The bill for the hospital was under $300 and the hotel which was associated with the hospital was about $200.

I rebooked my flight and went to check in. This time they were telling me that my ticket had expired and I had to buy a new one. I argued with them again but got nowhere. I took a taxi down to the airline's main office in downtown and demanded that they let me fly on my original ticket because it was them that forced me to delay the flight. They agreed but then tried to charge me change fees of several hundred dollars. I got really pissed off and was making a big scene for all the other passengers trying to do business in the office until they relented and allowed me to fly with no fees or anything. I went back to the airport and was finally able to check in. The woman checking me in seemed to be doing it against her better judgment but she had no choice.

The flight was long but I survived it. I got bumped up to the front of the cabin at the last minute. The extra leg room was a real lifesaver for me. I caused no problems on the flight and made it back to San Francisco where I had a friend pick me up. My experiment of living in Argentina was over for good. I had fun but it is not where I would want to retire for the rest of my life. It is too far away from my family and except for a short trout fishing season the fishing was not good enough for my taste. I needed to look closer to San Francisco for a place to retire where I would have access to my family and long time friends. I slowly improved healthwise while hanging around my family and friends in the Eastbay of San Francisco.

Patagonia glaciers and fjords

The blue color of the ice in the glaciers was very cool looking against the mostly gray drab colors surrounding most of the glaciers. If the sun was shining then they were an even more brilliant blue color. I think we saw hundreds of glaciers in all. We got off the ship and hiked around about five of them. We waited patiently for the ice to calf while we were watching them and we were rewarded twice with big chunks splitting off. I caught them both on camera one on still and one on video. One fell into the water while were were watching in our Zodiac inflatable boats and the crew immediately made us sit down and he got us moving before the big wave from the chunk hitting the water came over us. Lots of icebergs were floating around this glacier. The fjord was just full of ice chunks. The glaciers here are some of the only ones in the world that are still growing. Most of them are shrinking fast due to global warming.

We saw some dolphins and sea lions at some of the areas we went through, but most of South Western Patagonia is pretty barren of signs of humanity and of animals on land. At one of the places we stopped there were a lot of wild pigs running around and we had to be very careful not to get into any close encounters with them because they can be very dangerous. I saw a few that were just huge hogs. I would not want to have one the size of them come at me that is for sure. We did see some strange looking large white fish congregating around in one of the fjords where the glacier water was flowing into it. I don't have a clue what kind of fish they were. I had a good pic of the fish but it was lost on my computer somehow. Maybe I will find it again one day who knows. I can be a real klutz sometimes with the high tech stuff.

The cruise wound down and we landed at Punta Arenas, Chile after the best cruise I have ever taken. I spent a night in a hotel there and had a look around the town. There was not much to see or do. I stayed at a Victorian bed and breakfast that was expensive but nice. The prices in Chile surprised me. Everything was very expensive. I do not know how the locals can survive on the low wages they make coupled with the high prices of everything. They are more frugal than I could be. The next morning I got on a bus heading back over the Andes to Argentina. I found the bus station and the bus was running late. Eventually, a couple hours late we took off in a nice comfortable bus. I sat at a window near the front of the bus next to a young man that tried to talk to me the whole way. It was difficult for me to speak that much Spanish but we did ok and we had a good time together. He actually helped me a lot when I got to the border with Argentina and the border officials gave me a hard time because I did not have a printed airline ticket in my possession at the time. He helped me explain that I lived in Buenos Aires and that my ticket was there. I had already been in Argentina for many months and I had shown my airine ticket to get in the first time. I totally forgot about the ticket requirement in my rush to get packed for the trip a week earlier. The entire bus had to wait while we argued the point with the officials. He finally offered them a small regalo and we were on our way again.

The views from the bus were large expansive vistas of mountains and arid looking brushlands. We saw lots of wild vicunas and some lamas along the way. A few scattered large farms were the extent of any signs of humanity along the desolate road. I tried to get some pics but was mostly unsuccessful due to the low poor light conditions and the bus was also going fast trying to make up for the lost two hours at the start and the lost time at the border crossing. We finally made it to Rio Gallegos in Argentina and I checked into a small hotel for the night to recover from the long bus ride that just about killed me sitting for that long. I was taking morphine for the pain and just crashed in my room after a quick empanada for dinner. The next day I went through the usual, for Argentina, airline hurry up and wait issues because of the go slow strike of the airlines. I did finally get on the plane and flew back to Buenos Aires where it took me about a week to recuperate from the twelve day trip around Cape Horn and through Southwestern Patagonia's fjords and glaciers then over the mountains again to get back to Argentina. I had thought of stopping to see Torres del Pine park and glacier but I cancelled because I just wasn't healthy enough for any more walking or anything physical. On this trip I discovered that Argentina is a really big country with a lot of wild open spaces.

Around Cape Horn, Patagonia

We cruised through the Strait of Magellan and then headed south to go around the southern most tip of South America at Cape Horn. The water was calm on the way to the cape and we had gorgeous sunny weather. We saw some killer whales in the water and watched the mountains roll by. The food was great, served family style. The Englishmen made fun of my American style eating manners so I started to eat like an Englishman making fun of balancing peas on the back of a fork and holding my pinkie finger up in the air like the Queen. We all got a laugh out of it. We talked mostly about world politics but I think we talked about just about every topic known to mankind during the week on board. Our first stop was at Cape Horn the next morning.

We put our life jackets and raincoats on then climbed into the little orange inflatable launches for the ride to Cape Horn. It was a climb up a lot of slippery stairs to get to the top of the island, then a hike to walk around and see the monument to the lost sailors, the chapel, views and the light house on the island. The wind was blowing hard as we hiked around and I was glad to be wearing the heavy duty rain gear to keep out the cold wet wind. After a few hours we climbed back down to our inflatables and went back to the ship.

As we rounded the cape the seas suddenly increased in size and intensity. Our large ship was suddenly rolling and tossing the furniture around along with us passengers. Quite a few passengers and some staff got seasick from the motion. We were only out in the rough waters for about a half an hour before we reentered the calm protected waters of the straits again. The crew fixed all the furniture again as we entered the calm water and told us the rest of the trip should be flat calm except for one ten minute stretch around midnight or one o'clock in the morning that night. We watched movies, hung out in the chairs, at the bar or in our cabins during the cruise to our next stop which was going to be an island with penguins breeding on it. I went to bed early that night because I was having some pain problems. Just like we were warned, around 12:30 in the morning we hit some rough water. Way rougher than we were told, the big ship lurched sideways and rolled as my bed went flying across my cabin and I was thrown right out of it against the wall and onto the floor. They had not warned us it would be that bad and an assembly alarm sounded. All the passengers had to assemble to make sure nobody was injured. Several people were slightly injured but just with bruises and stuff. There were no broken bones but a little bit of blood from cuts on some passengers. The crew treated us and apologized for the sudden rouge wave that hit us. We went back to bed afterward. I had a few drinks at the bar first.

After breakfast we again loaded into our inflatables and headed to the island to check out the penguins. A huge wave of penguins was leaving the island just as we arrived so we only got to see the stragglers. Our guides told us that the majority had just left for the season and the penguins still left on the island would likely all perish. For various reasons they were not ready for the long swim to their next stopping point. It could be that they were born too late or their feathers did not grow fast enough or for whatever reason but they were left behind. We took some pictures of their nesting holes in the ground and some pics of the remaining penguins. They were totally unafraid of us and totally ignored our being there with our cameras and stuff. I think some of them were posing for us.

After the penguins our next several stops were all glaciers. We saw all different types of glaciers from clear blue ones to dirty blue ones. Most of the glaciers came down from the mountains right into the sea but some of them had receded up into the mountains a bit and had waterfalls pouring out and off of them. The blue color really stood out against the gray color of the weather we encountered. We hiked up to and onto the glaciers along the Avenue of the Glaciers. There was fjord after fjord along the way, all of them gorgeous.

I was hanging out with a French girl for my partner on the excursions. We hung out together on the ship a lot also. She spoke no English so we used some Spanish and some French to communicate, or we just used body language. She did not like the English people on board for some reason and they did not like her much either. The English kept calling her your pet and your ducky and similar names. I just ignored them and enjoyed the trip tremendously.

Ushuaia Argentina, Patagonia

A couple of weeks after I went to Mar del Plata I met a couple of Germans in Shoeless Joe's. The guy was a pilot and the girl was a flight attendant for Lufthansa. We were talking and they told me they were going on a cruise around Cape Horn and then through the fjords of Patagonia. I told them I would love to make a trip like that but that it was too expensive for me. He told me he could get me a special rate and he picked up his phone and made a call to his travel agent. In about two minutes I had a reservation on the week long all inclusive cruise for $527 dollars. The normal price for the cruise was about three grand so I got a real deal and had to jump on it. Then he booked my flight from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia for me and gave me the card for his travel agent to go pick up the tickets the next day. He also got me pilot rates on the flight to Ushuaia.

The big problem is I only had a couple of days to get packed and down to Ushuaia and the airlines in Argentina were on their seemingly perpetual strike. It was only a go slow strike not a complete strike. Basically they just messed up the schedules so that everybody flying had to sit around and wait for hours at a time. The schedule was just a piece of paper to drive the passengers nuts. I picked up my tickets and booked a hotel for the nights before the cruise departure. After throwing my stuff into my backpack I took a taxi to the airport and hurried up to check in only to sit and sit and sit at the airport. I wondered if we would ever take off but eventually we did. The flight was very long with a single stop along the way to drop off and pick up a few passengers. When we flew over Tierra del Fuego we could see beaver dams and all the trees down from the beavers. Tierra del Fuego is overrun with beavers. Ships were taking live beavers back to Europe from Alaska and the ships sank going around the horn. The beavers swam to shore and established a colony and with no predators they have multiplied to ridiculous numbers of beavers. For a while people tried to raise them for their fur but due to the mild climate the beavers stopped having the deep thick fur that was wanted for the fashion trade so nobody would buy the second rate furs. They gave up and all the beavers are wild now. We could also see the tail end of the Andes mountains, the Strait of Magellan and Cape Horn the southern most point of the Americas as we circled for landing at Ushuaia and Tierra del Fuego.

I checked into my hotel and walked around town. My travel agent had thrown in a day tour so I went on that. We drove West and rode a little train around for a nice view of the Andes diving into the sea. We also visited a sled dog farm that looked like it was right out of Alaska. I walked along a stream and saw some of Argentina's famous big trout in the stream, unfortunately the season was closed for fishing. When I got back from the tour I went to the town museum for an hour or so before heading back to the hotel for an early night. I enjoyed the little quirky museum. The Story of Shackleford and his men was told and they had lots of artifacts from their ill fated attempt at the South Pole. Those guys were tough in a way that not many people are today. How they survived like they did is just amazing. Wiki has a good article on the survival ordeal here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Shackleton

There was also a history of the penal colony that started Ushuaia as a city. Many infamous prisoners were housed in this remote prison and the museum tells their stories. There was also the history of Tierra del Fuego including the original inhabitants. When the first European ships approached Tierra del Fuego they saw large fires burning on the land. The original people who lived there were a tall race of indigenous people that wore no clothing what so ever even though the temperatures were freezing in the winter. They would build big bonfires to keep warm. When the European sailors landed the indigenous people died off from diseases that the sailors brought with them. There was a picture of the last three surviving natives at the museum but they have all died off. The women used to grease themselves up with seal oil and dive for food in the icy cold waters. How they survived without clothing in that harsh climate I can not imagine. They were tough like Shackleford I guess.

Ushuaia is a small town that looks like it would fit right at home in Alaska or Norway or someplace like that. The houses are mostly built in a nordic style. There was some manufacturing of electronic devices, some oil drilling and processing and a few other small businesses along with a bit of tourism and commercial fishing. Not much else happening there. I did go to a local bar and ended up talking to a local girl that wanted me to take her traveling with me because she just wanted to get out of Ushuaia. She worked as an assembler at the electronics company in town. We talked and had a few drinks and hung out at my hotel for a few hours. We had fun so I told her to contact me in a couple of weeks and she could come visit me in Buenos Aires but she never contacted me again.

The next day we loaded on the boat for the cruise.