Patagonia-4 Ushuaia

We flew from El Calafate to Ushuaia, which is in Terra del Fuego, and claims the title of the southernmost city in the world. 

We checked into our hotel, which was on the water on the outskirts of town. I asked whether the Tolkeyen Hotel was named after the author JRR Tolkien; I was told not, and they pronounce it as Tol-kay-shen in Patagonia. 

Views from in front of the hotel. 

We boarded our bus and led by our local guide Luciano we went to Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego (Tierra del Fuego National Park), where we went for a walk. Gorgeous country! 

This is the Beagle Channel, one of the straits connecting the Pacific and Atlantic oceans; the other strait is the Straits of Magellan. This strait is named for HMS Beagle, the ship that Charles Darwin was on in Puerto Deseado, Terra del Fuego, and the Galapagos Islands. 

We explored a tide pool on the Beagle Channel. 

Turn over a rock and you can find interesting things! 

Sights along the trail. 

There was a family of Ashy-Headed Geese. 

I wanted to get closer, at a different angle, to get a photo with the water in the background. But I did not want to get too close, as that would scare them off. 

Nate took a picture of me taking a picture of the geese. 

This is the “End Of The World Post Office” in Tierra del Fuego National Park. 

We traveled by bus to a more inland part of the park and walked along a river. There were campsites nearby. A gorgeous place to camp! 

We saw birds, including a Rufous-collared sparrow, Black-faced ibises, and Upland geese. 

We had lunch in a picnic area sitting by a creek; I saw a butterfly and had to spend time chasing it until I got a good photo. There was also a Crested Caracara patrolling the picnic area. 

At the picnic area, I saw an interesting camper and went over to talk to the people. Kees and Jacobine are from the Netherlands and have traveled all over the world. Kees built the camper himself, starting with a used four-wheel drive firetruck from Germany. They shipped the camper to South America from Europe. The map on the side of the camper shows their travels with this camper; there were previous campers. More info on their website. Jacobine is an artist, and she showed me her work-in-progress, penguin art, using newspaper as a canvas. These people are travelers! 

We saw wild horses in several parts of the park. They were not at all afraid of us. 

You may have noticed the stumps of dead trees near the horses. This is due to a stupid idea by the Argentine government to introduce beavers to establish a fur trade in Terra del Fuego. The problem was that there weren’t bears or wolves in Patagonia that are the natural predators of the Canadian beavers. The beavers breed like, well, beavers, and the population exploded. Beavers will be beavers, and they built dams that flooded large areas and killed the trees. The beaver dams can be destroyed, but it takes a long time for the ecosystem to recover from the flooding. The sign reads “Beaver Trail.” 

Picture of an idyllic beaver dam. 

We then went to Bahia Lapataia (Lapataia Bay), which Patagonians called “The End of the World.” This is the southernmost point of the longest road on the planet, the end of Argentine National Route 3, and also the end of the Pan-American Highway network that starts in Alaska. This is the farthest south you can drive in the Western Hemisphere. 

Patti took a picture of me at The End of the World. 

The next day we had a long drive and stopped several times along the way. The first stop was at a peat moor. Stepping on the plants felt very squishy. 

Our next stop was at an inlet from the Beagle Channel where there were the remains of a beached whale. The vertebrae were interesting. 

There was a sandpiper in the water. 

We stopped for what Luciano, our Ushuaia-based local guide, said was the most beautiful tree in windswept Terra del Fuego. 

We then arrived at our destination, Estancia Harberton (Harberton Ranch), which dates from 1886. 

After lunch in their tea room overlooking the Beagle Channel, we went on a tour of the ranch and their Museum. 

We then boarded a boat to go visit Isla Martillo to see penguins! We first saw Magellanic Penguins, our third time seeing this species. They dig holes for their nests. 

I don’t know what this penguin dance is. 

We saw birds, including Crested Caracaras, …

Brown Skuas, …

Upland Geese, …

and Steamer ducks, which are flightless.  

We then went to a different part of the island where Gentoo Penguins make nests with rocks. The Gentoo Penguins are really pretty. 

We saw penguins on eggs and penguins with chicks. 

One penguin partner must always remain with the nest to protect the eggs or chicks from predators while the mate is out at sea feeding. We learned from our guides that when both parents are present, one will try to improve the quality of the nest by stealing rocks from other nests! We saw this happen!  

This is my favorite Gentoo picture. 

We returned to our hotel, and a few hours after dinner, I went out to the water to look at the sunset. I love taking pictures of sunsets, but every previous night on this trip the sky had been cloudy. Not tonight. The sky was beautiful and I got a great sunset picture.

Note that this picture was taken at 10:20 PM. This was late December, nearly the Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere. According to an astronomical website, the sun rose at 4:50 AM and set at 10:09 PM, and there was twilight all night long.