Ushuaia - the southernmost city in the world

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Even with all of the excitement of our day on the Moreno glaciar, we managed to book a flight to Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego for the same afternoon. We landed in the southernmost tip of Argentina after only an hour by plane and found ourselves in an even colder place than El Calafate, it did feel very Christmassy though. At the tourist office we were given the name of a B&B, ´Los Retamas´ run by Eduardo and Monica. They were a lovely couple who really took us under their wing and within half an hour of arriving we knew the best things to see and do in the area and had about ten maps to choose from. They beat the Lonely Planet hands down!

Southernmost road in the world!

Next day we set off in our hire car down route three which ended in the Tierra del Fuego National Park and is the southernmost road in the world. The national park is right on the border with Chile and there were times as we walked around it that we could have reached out and touched Chile! We walked around some of the trails in the national park in all our winter woolies. It was freezing and at one stage it even started to snow and this is their summer! North American beavers were introduced by some ´clever´soul to this part of the world some time ago and they have changed the landscape somewhat in the national park through their damming and the trees that this has killed.

Our own little cabaña in the woods...

Next day we moved to some cabañas also run by Eduardo and Monica. They were really cosy wooden little cabañas on raised platforms among the trees. After settling in we drove to see a couple of the lakes near Ushuaia, Lagos Escondida and Fagnano. The first had a hostal right beside it serving Sunday lunch. It was the local speciality cordero which is more or less lamb cooked on a spit. It was the nearest thing that we have had to a Sunday lunch since we left England and Ireland and really tasty too! We spent the rest of the day cruising around in our little car, enjoying having our own set of wheels even if the roads were pretty much dirt tracks at times. There was no visibility at times due to the clouds of dust kicked up by other drivers.

PPPPPick up a penguin...well don´t really

Today we set off for Estancia Harberton to see the nearby penguin colony. The estancia (or estate) was built by an English man Thomas Bridges whose children were the first white children born in Ushuaia and who shipped the pre-fab house on the estate over piece by piece from England. The girl who was our guide for the penguin colony was descended from the Bridges, the sixth generation living in Ushuaia. It did feel like a little bit of England on the estancia, complete with a little tea shop selling gorgeous cakes. We were amazed by the number of penguins in the colony when we travelled by boat along the beagle channel over there. There were two types on the island, Magellanic penguins, the most common type with two black stripes across it´s neck and the less plantiful Gentoo with it´s red beak. The two species nested in completely different ways, the megellanic building burrows like rabbits and the Gentoo building nests right out in the open which makes them more vulnerable so they all tend to nest together. The are really lovely little creatures and walk with a funny sideways movement and have to turn their heads from side to side as if they are very curious because their eyes are at the sides of their heads and not the front. The baby penguins are all born around this time and we saw some with their paresnts. The babies look like like little goslings or ducklings with brown fluffy feathers. They lose this coat and acquire a waterproof one when they start to mature. Pairs mate for life and come back to the same place to nest every year, always finding eachother even if they have been separated. They have few predatators but one of them, the Brown Skua nests right amongst the penguins. We saw lots of these birds circling around the penguins´nests when we were there.

An ickle baby glaciar

Today we hiked up to see the Martial glaciar. We were able to get a chair lift up a certain amount of the way and then continued on foot. It was pretty steep in parts and luckily most of the snow had melted almost up to the glaciar itself which is much smaller than the Moreno glaciar. The views once we reached the glaciar were really impressive, we could see the snow capped mountains, Ushuaia and the bay. We decided to make use of some of the snow to make a snowman, Pete was quite attached to it - should I be worried?? Later we did some Christmas shopping in Ushuaia.

Next day we had a flight back to sweltering Buenos Aires. We said goodbye to Eduardo and our cabaña and Ushuaia.

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