Ushuaia - end of the world with penguins!

Ushuaia skies
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Our flights to Ushuaia were on time, we flew to BA from Iguazu, then caught another flight to Ushuaia which first stopped to drop off and pick people (mainly loud, pushing and rude Germans and Americans) from Trelew.

We were to spend 4 nights in Ushuaia which would involve exploring some of the dramatic landscapes here as well as some of the wildlife.

After reaching our hotel and relaxing for the evening we went on a tour to see penguins on an island in the Beagle Channel.  This trip involved an hour and a halfs journey through the Haberton Estate where we saw first hand the destruction of the beaver population has had on the Yunga trees and the landscape.  These beavers were introduced many years ago and now they were flooding the landscape which killed the Yunga trees and had bred widely. There are now more beavers in the region than all of Ushuaia - some 70,000.

Beagle channel landscapes that look like paintings
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After this we reached the site where we climbed aboard an powerful outboard with 13 other people.  Only 45 people a day are allowed to visit the island to try and help protect the colony.  As we approached the beach we were given the instructions and rules about visiting, basically being quiet, remain as a group and not to startle the population in anyway.  So after we climbed carefully off the boat we found ourselves surrounded by penguins!  After we sat down and maintained a lower profile the penguins were pretty curious, some would circle us, some would not move and seemed non plussed by our presence.  Others quite sensibly would go into the water, swim around and come back onto the beach further up.  As you can imagine we got many photos!

Penguins
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We then headed up the beach inland a touch and saw some of the nesting areas, the population was still there and many still had chicks that were nearing moulting time and from there they would go out to sea for the summer.  We observed couples guarding the nests and parent feeding / looking atfter their young.  To be this close was pretty amazing but also a touch worrying as we were concious that a human presence is not the most natural thing for them.  We also saw some of the chicks that had not made it.  Either through ilness, abandonment or the Scuers which preyed on the young and readily ate any chicks or eggs they could.  After about an hour and a half and probably a gig of photos we headed back where we had an asado for lunch.

Penguin inspection
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Our second day in ushuaia we ventured out to the local national park above the town.  Here we hiked for a couple of hours up a steep path to the edge of a glaciar on the mountain at about 1000metres.  We enjoyed the walk until it got pretty steep, Bex did not like the steepness and did not feel too confident in her new walking boots.

At the top we stepped onto snow and further up we could see the glaciars blue ice above us.  We saw a few guys climb higher upto the ice, one guy in particular who had passed us on the way up looked like he knew what he was doing, however when I turned back I saw he had traversed up pretty high between two large sheets of the blue ice.  I watched him sit down to rest and he suddenly slipped.  He was tumbling down backwards across the snow grabbing for grip, found none and flew down the ice sheet which was rough and blue and approx 70 metres long.  Luckliy he found snow below this and had a relativley soft landing, if he had been further across he would have been down and off a rock edge!  We then saw him gingerly get up and traverse back, his climbing for the day was definately over!  The saying "All the gear no idea" definately came to mind.

on the penguin island beach
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Later on in the weekend we day tripped into the other national pàrk nearby and did a 4 hour walk along the coastline of the Beagle channel, this took us through woods and coastline with lots of birds and pleasant views to the mountains looking down onto the channel.  It was pretty warm and we found a good spot looking across the channel. The only downside was it was high season so there was quite a bit of human traffic, but nothing too bad that could not be avoided by going off the path a bit.

penguin nesting areas
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We had a relaxing day in Ushuaia the day after, I took advantage of the cheap ales, here a litre of beer costs approx 50pence, so it can be quite hard not to drink too much sometimes, Argentina is particularily cheap.  We then moved onto Calafate by plane, we fly with LAN which again was very pleasant and pretty cheap (60 pounds).