We are approaching the longest day here in Tierra del Fuego and despite being shattered from the journey, Kevin was up at seven and Joan was no long after.
We are staying at a flat rented out by Ahnen http://www.ahnen.com.ar/
The flat is about 5-10 minutes from the main street. There were more glamourous cabins and cabins to let but all of these are up on the slopes of the mountain and require a car. This was convenient. It is in a residential area, and typical of the town it is obviously a self-build held together with wood, breeze blocks, corrugated metal and hope. It is above a residential house with outdoor staircase access. There is a small kitchen-diner, bathroom and bedroom.

As we had no food, Joan walked into town whilst Kevin washed all the kitchen equipment, oven, and surfaces, At the supermercado, J asked if they accepted credit cards. The lass on the checkout said only MasterCard. We bank with VISA. As we only had a few pesos in cash Joan shopped carefully (rarely done normally) and at the till realised one of our cards that we only use abroad to avoid transaction fees was a MasterCard! She didn't know the PIN but here they require passports instead of PINs. Brilliant, we can eat!

Today is a rest day so our aim was to suss out the local excursions, get more cash and book our onwards journey to Punta Arenas.

There are a lot of capital works being done here but it is obvious they have no revenue to maintain them. Sounds familiar. Many public works look ad through want of TLC.

We walked to the pier where the cruise boats depart. We were quite surprised to know that boats depart here for the Falklands (Islas Malvinas) as previously one had to go to Chile to get to Pirt Stanley.

We booked two trips. Tomorrow we are cruising the Beagle Channel and on Wednesday going to the Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego. The weather is unseasonably warm and the lass at the booking office suggested we sailed today as tomorrow there would be wind and rain. We declined as we want the full bad weather experience as recorded by Captain Fitzroy.

After a couple of beers we sought out the Buses Pacheco office to book our onwards trip on Friday. It had moved but a local gave us directions. On getting there we were told to come back at 3.30 when the booking office was open. So we went to a Café and ordered a Panini which turned out to be a pizza folded in half. Joan enviously admired the chef who swung pizza dough into circles with his hands.

Back at the booking office, the people in front of us took nearly an hour to book their tickets as they didn't know when or where they wanted to go. We however took ten minutes and only because the lass doing the booking had a long telephone conversation whilst making ours. The queue behind was massive.

So after that, a quick trip to buy provisions for dinner and then back to the flat.