On Tuesday, the weather was supposed to be not so great so we decided to stay in town and visit the museums. We went to the Museo del Fin del Mundo (The End of the World Museum), the Yamana (native) Museum, and the Prison Museum.
We headed to the Museo del Fin del Mundo first, where we got an End of the World passport stamp, which was pretty exciting in and of itself. This museum mainly talked about the settling of Tierra del Fuego (the island Ushuaia is on) and Ushuaia itself. It had some fun stuff including the masthead from the Duchess of Albany which sank near Ushuaia, which sounds tragic, but it may have sunk on "accident" for insurance purposes.We then went to visit the Yamana museum. The Yamana were the main native tribe of the area and have virtually all died out due to the whiteman's diseases. Some interesting facts about the Yamana: 1. They didn't usually wear clothing because the clothes would just get wet and so they'd be colder than before. Instead they went naked and covered themselves in sealion fat. 2. Only the women could generally swim. 3. When they got married they got a canoe/ boat and not before. 4. They were basically nomadic traveling from place to place in their boat, in which they always had a fire going. The boats leaked a lot so that they were continuously having to bail them out... but it meant there was not a big danger of the boat catching on fire. 5. They would kill cormorants in one of two ways. The first was that they would distract the bird with a fire from a torch and then club the bird over the head. The second is that they would climb down cliffs, sneak up on the bird and then break its neck. I'm sure I don't have the skills to do either of those things.
After the Yamana museum we split up to go to lunch, the Walkers wanted to go one place and the kids and I went to another. The one we went to claimed to have fast food. If by fast food you mean an hour plus for lunch... yes it was fast. Luckily we were not in a hurry. After lunch we decided to hit some souvenir shops. Our groups broke down even further into pairs: the Walkers, the girls, with Matt and I making up the third pair. We were supposed to meet at the Prison museum at 3:30.
After having a good time looking through the shops, Matt and I decide to head to the museum. We get to the driveway leading up to the museum at 3:25. Well, we had seen the Walkers in a store we left, and clearly we'd get there before the girls, so we decided to wait at the driveway. After 5 minutes, no one else has shown up. So we decide maybe there is a remote possibility that the others got there first... sure enough we get to the entrance and everyone is waiting on us. (Whoops!) Matt and I forgot that after we had seen the Walkers we had gone to another store.
Ushuaia was started as a penal colony and had a big prison that housed some of Argentina's worst offenders. The prison is now a museum that has a pretty random assortment of things. One wing is mostly about the settling of the area , artic exploration, and the history of the museum including some of the more famous prisoners. In that wing there is also stuff about prisons around the world. We skipped most of those cells. Two wings were mostly art. The fourth wing was preserved as it had been when it was actually a prison. It was pretty chilly in that wing.
Our favorite part of the museum was probably the English translations on the signs. It was barely understandable much of the time. This one is blurry but was our favorite. It says, "Some people believes that Amundson arrived first to the South Pole because he carried sled dogs instead the ponnies of Scott." Yes it would be lighter to carry sled dogs than ponnies... although I'm not sure what ponnies are. :) (By the way, I have no doubt that, this is what I sound like in Spanish.)
Matt, Amber, and Karaline were not excited to be in prison. This is in the preserved wing.
We of course had to take pictures of ourselves in jail. Karaline went first. Now you have to understand that Karaline is one of the world's nicest people. If you are reading this you probably know me and know that I am not. Well, while we were taking pictures, I realized there was a latch on the door, so I... um... well locked Karaline in. We unlocked it after 30 seconds or so after we had a good laugh. The Walkers decided that they wanted to have their pictures taken and decide to go into the same cell. Now those of you who know me well know this is not a wise decision, if I've already locked one of the nicest people in the world in a prison cell, I won't hesitate to lock 2 people in. This time however, we locked it and walked off a bit. Before we let them out, Matt made Wimon promise to quit quoting Gregor, the Latin American Philosophy teacher. (Matt is taking this class and Wimon is sitting in on it and quotes Gregor, particularly to Matt, all the time.)It was then my turn to go into a cell. I (along with Matt and Amber) found cells that did NOT have a latch on them. :)
Every good prison museum has a cut out for tourists to pose in. After the museum, we went to have free hot chocolate. (We had gotten a coupon for them when we went on the boat tour.) From there the Walkers and Amber went back to the hostel, her ankle was starting to get to her, and Matt, Karaline and I did a bit more shopping.
The three of us had also volunteered to go to the corner shop near our hostel to pick up empanadas for dinner. Since we only had to walk half a block we didn't particularly bundle up. Well we get to the shop and they look at us like we were crazy for thinking we could get empanadas there. Well we thought Matt (who speaks excellent Spanish) must have misunderstood where the empanada shop was, so we tried several corners in the area looking for another store. We gave up and went back to the hostel. The first store was the one they were talking about, so we still aren't clear on how there was confusion about the availability of emapadas. We gave up and got in the car to go to a place further off... which seems easy except there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the one way streets of Ushuaia. After about 15 or 20 min of driving around (all in about 10 blocks of the hostel) and much talking to the mountains and the weather and the empanada shops of Ushuaia, we finally found a place. We were quite proud of ourselves! :) I know fascinating story...
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