Journey to the end of the World


Advertisement
Published: July 19th 2017
Edit Blog Post

Journey to the end of the World, or the road in the park at least. We were again in luck being able to dock whereas the winds had prevented NCL in the morning. Like so many ports in South America the itinerary is weather dependent. This was another shore excursion from HAL and we chose the coach rather than train as I think it went further into the National Park. I'd hoped to see more of the town as we drove out but the ship docked on the west side so there was just one small street out - at least we saw the new builds happening. Our guide told of the history of Ushuaia and pointed out the original settlement of what looked like huts to the west of the current port. From the webcams I'd viewed I knew there were hanging glaciers in the mountains above the town but our day was very cloudy with some rain and we caught only glimpses of them. There was little to see as we drove but once in the National Park attention was drawn to the trees, mostly beech and the damage that has been done by beavers introduced in the hopes of creating a fur trade. We stopped at a bay on the Beagle Channel where a kiosk on a jetty is the furthest most Post Office in the Southern Hemisphere. I was more interested in photographing the plant life along the shore than writing postcards. We also pulled into Lake Acicama to walk into the bush seeing plants and stopped at the Park information centre which had excellent displays on the flora and fauna of the area. By the water we saw many birds including shags, cormorants, geese and even a heron flew by.

The road ends in Lapataia Bay with a board walk of a couple of hundred meters to wander round. Again there were birds and an array of plants but most people wanted to take photos by the sign - perhaps they need to prove they were there? As might be expected, the end of the road from the tip of Alaska down to the lowest tarmac in South America was nothing special in itself but the park overall was a great day out if you are interested


Additional photos below
Photos: 5, Displayed: 5


Advertisement



Tot: 0.127s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 9; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0484s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.1mb