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Published: February 23rd 2019
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The first view of Ushuaia the world’s most Southern city did not disappoint: A port hugging the edge of the Beagle Channel grasped by snow capped mountains and horizontal rain. We had left Buenos Aires after an overnight stay (quite by chance having stayed at the same hostel that we did in 2006) in 30C sunshine and it was 6C when we landed in Ushuaia three hours later. The airport sits on a short peninsula exposed to the persistent south-westerlies blowing up the Beagle Channel from Antarctica. Across the water in Chile more barren snow-capped peaks rise up into the clouds.
We had booked a double room at a homely hostel ahead of time not far from the airport. It has good cooking facilities so we have started to getting the hang of shopping in Argentina. I pointed to some meat and asked the butcher what it was? ‘Nalga’ he said into my phone. ‘Buttock’ said Google Translate; so I knew it must be rump steak!
To accommodate the weather we picked to go walking in the Terra del Fiego National Park on the first day when it was due to rain and on a boat trip along the
Beagle Channel on the second when the weather as predicted was much better. Just as in Western Scotland you have to dress appropriately, assuming it is going to rain.
The national park was a 10 km ride West of Ushuaia which we reached via tourist minibus booked by the hostel. It would have been nice to do the mountain walk and with the low cloud we opted to walk along the coast instead. We had soon picked up, Bruce, a single traveller from San Diego, who was obviously happy to find someone to chat to. We walked on beaches and on good paths through native beech forests (their leaves are much smaller than English/US species) typically in the company of at least one species of bird. There were geese and gulls and albatrosses swopping out to sea. The highlight was a pair of Magellanic woodpeckers, the male with a bright red head, tapping away on fallen branches very close to the path we were on.
When the first white settlers/missionaries came there were around 3000 natives living in the coastal regions in the area. Diseases like small pox and measles soon wiped them out and all that remains
today are misshapen grassy mounds of shells left over from their hunting trips dotted along the shore. We left Bruce at the HQ’s café and headed on through glacial valleys to the ‘fin del Mundo’, the end of Route 3, the starting point of epic trips to Alaska. By this time we were quite damp and Jane had concluded that her 20 year old jacket was no longer water proof. There was steak and red wine to improve the mood when we got back to the hostel.
The Beagle channel is simply magnificent. It is lined with snowy peaks like crooked molars and sprayed with islands, some large and some barely visible. The boat stopped by the ones with colonies. The first has cormorants. Petrels swirled around ominously at the edge and ganged up on weak birds for their next meal. One rock was shared by harems of seals, big males keeping a protective flipper on his batch of girls.
As we plough down the channel, just keeping in Argentina waters, the Albatrosses glided around us only flapping their wings when absolutely necessary. There was a shout of excitement when the plump of a whale’s blow hole (we
reckon it was a minke!) was spotted and we watched it dip and dive as we went past.
Further down the coast the boat beached on a pebbled shore the home to Magellanic and Gentoo penguins. We had a happy half hour watching them waddle in and out of the water their chicks just of an age when they were losing their brown down. There was even a king penguin standing in arrogant isolation amongst his shorter brethren.
We had elected to be dropped off at Estancia Harberton, a historical sheep station, and we were not disappointed. It was founded by Thomas Bridges in 1886 when he persuaded the Argentinian government to give him 20,000hectares for 20 years of well-meaning missionary work in Ushuaia. The estancia has now morphed itself into a tourist centre and also a centre for the study of sea mammals thank to the American wife of one of the fourth generation. Part of the tour was through a small museum by volunteer ‘marine biologists’ who most days are cleaning skeletons of stranded whales and seals for further study. I probably learn more about sea mammals in the hour I was there than I have in the rest of my life.
We have now headed North and crossed the border into Chile to Punta Arenas. We cross the Magellan Straits on a ro-ro ferry leaving Terra del Fiego in the same conditions we arrived: horizontal rain.
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