Breakfast at B&B de las Artes was back to the usual Argentinian style, a basket of toast, sweet croissants, coffee and juice. It was nice enough and the bread wasn't stale, everything seemed to have been bought fresh that morning.

During breakfast, Marcos, the owner, called a bus company to arrange a pick up at 10am for our trip to the Tierra del Fuego National Park. It gave us enough time to go to bakery to get some sandwiches for lunch and to get our stuff together.

The park is about 12km west of town so it wasn't a long ride and the 200 pesos for return bus fare seemed on the steep side, but Ushuaia is a mecca for rich tourists so we just needed to suck it up. Entrance fee to the park was another 140 pesos so it was rapidly becoming an expensive day.

The bus dropped us off at a pier, which had the most southerly post office in the world sitting on it. We could have got a special stamp in our passport if we wanted, but apart from not having our passport with us, they were charging for it.

There was a four hour walk that we decided to do. The beginning of the track had nice views of the sea and the surrounding mountains. The mountains were not on the same scale of the ones we left behind in El Chaltén, but they were still nice. The path was really gentle and stuck pretty much on the waterline. After a sandwich stop on the shore, the path turned away from the sea and into the forest but if anything, it seemed to get wetter and the path got quite muddy at times.

We spent quite a long time in the forest, which was not that interesting for us. We have been through lots of forest, some full of streams and packed with interesting flora and fauna. There wasn't much other than trees here and the voices of other walkers seemed to amplify, which no doubt scared off all the wildlife.

Eventually the path ended up running parallel to the road and was extremely muddy and in a bit of disrepair. Boardwalks and bridges across the worst sections were missing planks. The path finally came out on the road which we walked down on for half a kilometre before crossing a river to the start of another track.

The Laguna Verde track, as the name suggests, took us round the "Green Lagoon". It wasn't a very interesting track either with some really boggy sections. In the end, we had walked a total of three hours with a sandwich stop.

We saw the 2pm bus coming up the road and we decided to hop on as we would otherwise have had to wait over 2 hours for the next one and there were only another couple of really short walks we could do.

Back at the hostel, we had a cup of soup and an empanada while we spoke to Marcos about booking a cruise on Beagle Chanel for the morning. After taking us through the pros and cons of the different tours, we settled for one that was on a smaller boat that would get us closer to the islands to see the birds, sealions and the lighthouse. We chose not to go to the penguin colony because we had seen them before and it was more expensive.

We took a walk into town to visit the museum, but once we realised that it would cost 200 pesos each for entry, we decided to give it a miss because that seemed a bit too steep.

Instead we went in search of the casinos, but not for gambling. We were hoping to exchange some of our American dollars for Argentine pesos because we had heard that they had good rates. The casinos would only change with the official rate of 8.5 and not closer to the 'blue' rate that was sitting at 13. Perhaps there have been a lot more cruise ship passengers coming into the town spending their dollars and euros so that they don't need to trade on the illegal blue rate.

There was a huge memorial plaza for the Falkland's War. It was to remember the 'Heroes' who fought and died in the war although the photo diary was very misleading - it was all about the Argentinians occupying the Falklands and defending it. It had absolutely nothing about the subsequent surrender and the return of island to British rule - all very bizarre.

We went to dinner at Placeres Patagonicos, a restaurant recommended by Andy and Carlee. They had had the menu del dia, but we guessed that the food should still be good in the evening. David had filled chicken breast that was absolutely huge while Maria had Patagonian lamb filled raviolis. Both were very tasty although the pasta could have had a bit more sauce on it.
We went for a drink in the Dublin pub afterwards, but it was packed out and because standing and drinking isn't the done thing here (unlike the UK) we walked backed out again.

David was curious to know what the Falkland Islanders themselves think, because they are very close to Argentina but it has been British overseas territory since 1833. The Falklands have internal selfgovernance, with the United Kingdom taking responsibility for their defense and foreign affairs. The population (2,932 inhabitants in 2012) primarily consists of native Falkland Islanders, the majority of British descent. Other ethnicities include French, Gibraltarian and Scandinavian, but no Argentine descent.

Under the UN Charter, the islanders have the "right to selfdetermination" although Argentine policy maintains that Falkland Islanders do not have a right to selfdetermination.

In March 2013, the Falkland Islands held a referendum on its political status, and 99.8 percent of voters favored remaining under British rule. Argentina does not recognize the Falkland Islands as a partner in negotiations; consequently, it dismissed the Falkland Islands' sovereignty referendum.