I left from Stuttgart on Saturday headed for Ushuaia, a town on the tip of South America in Argentina. From here we’ll be flying to Antarctica to study sea ice in a Navy P3 (ours is getting inspected or some such business at the moment). We have several missions to fly, and they’re all about 10 hours apiece (I am not sure why they are not longer, however). Today will be the first time I’ve seen our installation, and will also be my first attempt at fixing some of the problems that I know exist with it.

I was expecting the town to be similar to Punta Arenas, but it’s really different.

First of all, the town lies next to some mountains (I have a nice view of them from my hotel room), and the city seems a little more touristy. The hotel we are staying in is nice, but outrageously expensive, which is a little bit disappointing – I would rather stay in the town and get an idea of what it’s really like here. It’s never that great to travel somewhere only to stay in a place that is just like everywhere else that you’re used to. When things are up and running and the convenience of being near my colleagues has disappeared, I’ll think about moving.

Yesterday there was an airshow that was impressive from up here (the hotel is situated a ways up the mountain), and today there is an anniversary celebration of some type that we’ll check out later. The Navy P-3 arrives sometime this afternoon – which I’m looking forward to, since our Laser stuff isn’t working yet. Hopefully, with some duct tape and rigging, it’ll be working by Thursday morning (our first supposed flight).

I can’t really say much about this place yet, since I’m still getting an idea of what it is like. The downtown shopping area has almost anything you could want (although we still haven’t located a bathroom mirror, or walkie-talkies) so it’s not really that far away from the rest of the world. I haven’t really figured out what the main attractions are yet – I suppose I should ask a normal tourist why they decided to come here in the first place…