Today we spend the day in Ushuaia, waiting to board the Via Australis for our voyage around Cape Horn. We rise late, breakfast and pack. While I putter with my computer, D and B find the office where we are to check in with Cruceros Australis, the cruise company. And we see our ship in the harbor; in the picture, the red arrow points to to it. Not so big, eh?
As a bonus, we find that we can check in with the cruise line and drop our bags early, so we cautiously wheel down the steep streets to the office. There we do the paperwork (customs for Chile, since we almost immediately leave Argentina on this cruise), surrender our passports, and pick up boarding passes. We have the rest of the day free for shopping and museums and lunch.
We visit the Museo del Fin del Mundo, the Museum of the End of The World. There are several rooms in this old building, formerly a bank. The largest of the rooms provides information about the native people of the region, among them the Yamana, and about the European explorers and missionaries who first discovered and then colonized the area. The displays are dominated by the huge carved figurehead from the English ship Duchess of Albany, sunk off Tierra del Fuego in 1883. Another small room is arranged as a grocery store of the 19th century; a third provides information about the prison. A larger room displays, in large glass cases, stuffed birds representative of the region. We also visit the library, where we thumb through an atlas, getting the lay of the land firmly fixed in our minds.
We stroll through the museum garden, a few exhibits perched on the grassy slope on either side of the building. D and B wander down to the old prison building further along the mall, while Isa and I sit on a bench and soak up the sun. It is another unbelievably beautiful, sunny day. We lunch at a small shop with only four tables but excellent empanadas. After lunch we return to the hotel, retrieve our hand luggage, and sit in the lounge sipping tea until time to board.
Our boarding passes get us through the port gate with ease. We board and are shown to our rooms. Our room is surprisingly roomy, positively luxurious when compared to our cabin on the Star Flyer. We meet in the lounge for pisco sours and a tango show, and then attend a safety lecture.
At 8 p.m. we bit farewell to Ushuaia, and set out for Puerto Navarino, where we will clear Chilean customs before the ship heads 
for the Murray Channel and on toward Cape Horn.
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