Today we disembark from what has been a wonderful cruise. Our flight to Buenos Aires is not until 12.30 pm, so we signed up for an optional tour of Tierra del Fuego National Park this morning to fill in time. Unfortunately, this meant we were first to disembark at 7 am, as the tour goes for about 3.5 hours.
We had a short wait for our bus to arrive before we were on our way through the streets of Ushuaia heading for the National Park. Ushuaia's main claim to fame is that is the Southern most city in the World, so everything our guide pointed out to us was the Southern most something. This included the World's Southern most golf course, a nine hole course that apparently attracts enthusiasts from around the World.
It was then the World's Southern most Rugby Club.
Even though they were playing soccer on the Rugby ground, we are told that Rugby is a strongly supported sport in Ushaia
As we approached the National Park, our guide gave us a bit of a history lesson on the development of the city of Ushuaia, which was clearly meant to prepare us for what we were about to see as we entered the park. It seems that Ushuaia was a prisoners settlement. The city was established to provide Argentina with a presence in this Southern area, after the establishment of the borders between Chile and Argentina when they gained independence from Spain in the early 19th century. The Beagle channel is effectively the border between the two nations and a healthy distrust between them required a physical presence there to defend their borders. Not surprisingly, there was little enthusiasm from Argentinians to move to the beautiful climate of Ushuaia, where is is cold all year round. The only solution was to establish a penal settlement. The primary pursuit of the prisoners was cutting down trees to build houses and have fuel for heating and cooking. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to work out the impact this would have on forests which are predominantly beech trees that take about 80 years to reach a desirable size for logging.
Our first vision of these pristine forests was a bit underwhelming.
Recovery is slow
And is some cases, all that is left is peat bogs
Once further on an into the National park, proper, we began to see areas that the prisoners had not reached. However, someone had a bright idea to introduce beavers into this area, to set up a fur trade, as there was little else commercially to support the economy here. The beavers also liked beech trees and took over from where the prisoners left off. They have done quite a bit of damage to some parts of the forest.
Patagonian Geese
Despite the weather, camping and outdoor water activities like kayaking are popular. We saw several camping sites along the way.
Eventually we arrived at our first stop, Lapataia Bay
The sign depicts the end of the Pan American Highway, (Route 3) from Alaska to Lapataia Bay
Once out of the bus, the first highlight was a sighting of the local woodpecker, the sound gave them away.
The male has a red head
The female is all black
Many of the trees had clusters of red mushrooms growing on them. These are edible and quite sweet in flavour. The natives used to eat them
There was a view out over the Beagle Channel with Chile on the other side. There were lots of interperative signs to tell us all about the indigenous people, who in every illustration were shown to be not wearing any warm clothes, just loin skins and bare bodies. Maybe the climate was different then ?
An elevated walkway took us out to a viewing point
The viewing point was situated on top of a huge shell midden
There is a jetty of sorts here which must be used for kayaks etc
Mount Condor
Back in the bus, we headed to the visitors centre with the promise of not only a comfort break, but a drink and a snack. True to their word there were drinks, tea, coffee, soft drink, beer, wine and some biscuits. A few of our ageing co travellers weren't backward in hitting the wine at 9.30 in the morning.
The Visitors Centre
Other attractions at the visitors centre was an informative display on the history and features of the park. One display on glaciation took my eye. Even in Spanish the message was pretty clear, unfortunately I didn't have Chris Bowens email address. but I doubt that he would understand it anyway.
There was also a gift shop that was not yet open, much to the disdain of the souvenir hunters, or those looking for a stamp in their passport. Apparently there are people wanting to fill up their passports.
After our snack we went to our last stop, another pretty little bay on the Beagle Channel, where there was a short walk you could take through some more established native forest.
We drove through some typical forest along the way.
Arrival at Ensenada Bay.
A nice shoreline looking across the channel at Chile. There was another pier here.
A walkway took us along the shoreline through some forest. It was actually a long walking track, but the first 10 minutes of it gave us a good feel for the landscape
It was now time to get back in the bus and head to the airport to get our flight to Buenos Aires. We arrived about an hour before scheduled departure, as our bags had already been transported to the airport and checked in by Viking. We were given our boarding passes on the bus. There was no real need to hurry, as we have discovered in this part of South America, you can expect your flight to be delayed at least one hour, and we were not disappointed.
Waiting at Ushuaia Airport Terminal, a modern all timber building
By the time we checked in at the Hilton Hotel in Buenos Aires, it was 7 pm. Our flight back to Australia tomorrow is scheduled to leave at 8.40 am, so we are not looking for a late night.
The hotel is located close to Puerto Madero, where there are plenty of eating options, so we went for a bit of a walk to stretch our legs.
Busking Argentinian Style on the Woman's Bridge
The Woman's Bridge lit up a night
We didn't really feel like another Argentinian carnivore experience, so ended up settling for a pizza and a cold beer at a restaurant where we caught up with 2 other Aussie couples from the cruise.
It seems we need to leave the hotel at 5 am tomorrow morning, so it was an early night.
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