Today we had booked a tour to the Parque Nacional de Tierra del Fuego. As instructed we waited in the freezing cold for a bus to pick us up. After an hour of waiting, we were beginning to wonder what was going on. The flat we are staying in is linked to a guest house on the next street and Joan just happened to se a man come out and get in his car. (It isn't staffed 24/7). She approached him and it was David who had first greeted us here. Kindly he rang the tour company who said there had been some trouble with the bus (i.e. they had forgotten) and we were offered a refund or a new booking for the next day. We chose the latter.
Now left with a full day to improvise, we decided on an early lunch and a visit to the Maritime Museum which is housed in the fomer prison.
It is at the far end of the town next to a military base so we caught a taxi.
The former jail is in the former of a semi-panoptican with a central hall with five galleries of cells running from the hall. The first part of the expedition was a series of model boats made by a Ukrainian who had settled here. Unusually there were models of in tact boats as well as portrayals of shipwrecks.
There were also some old maps which illustrated the increasing skills of cartographers to map the region. It was amazing to see how even the early maps resembled bits of Tierra del Fuego.
Next into a prison wing, there were stories about the most famous prisoners, a history of the jail and a curious exhibition about jails around the world, including Nottingham.
It seems originally the jail was built to firstly populate this remote part of Argentina and secondly to bring jobs to the region. Joan remembered that Merthyr Tydfil Council were keen to have a new jail built in their area because of the jobs it would bring a few years ago.
At certain times political prisoners would be exiled here, but their quality of life was significantly better than the ordinary prisoners.
In the upper gallery there was an exhibition about Antarctic exploration. Life for the early explorers looked grim.
Afterwards we walked along the promenade, accompanied by two dogs who we had given some pastry to. We found another memorial to those who died in the Falklands conflict with a flame burning in front.
Back at home, we ate a dinner of pumpkin, spinach and goat's cheese pie - quite an achievement as the kitchen has scarcely any tools.