Ushuaia Excursions

Denny and I have been having a wonderful time here in Ushuaia waiting for our ship, the Clipper Adventurer, to come in tomorrow morning and us to be able to embark tomorrow afternoon! They have an amazing turn around time for cleaning and re-stocking the ships! We watched two embark this evening and are so glad that we are booked on a small ship for less than 100 guests – the mid-sized ones for three hundred and the huge cruise ships are entirely different experiences. Of course, if we get rough crossings of the Drake Passage, we may think otherwise!

Saturday we went to the Tierro del Fuego National Park on the far west end of the Bay. The main entrance is located 9 miles out of Ushuaia along a long and very dusty gravel road. You can take a bus or a taxi to the entrance and then pay your 30 pesos ($10) to enter. There is an Information Center and shuttles that will take you another 15 miles or so between overlooks or trail heads. There are also day long tours on buses and minivans and taxis for hire. We went to the very end, Lapataia Bay.

Then we hiked the Mirador Lapataia (Lapataia Lookout) trail with beautiful, panoramic views of the bay. It was too short of a hike for us though and we wished we had scheduled more time and a way to take a longer trail. You live and you learn! We did, however, see some of the infamous rabbits about which Argentines complain, plus Magellanic woodpeckers, Upland Geese, and two hawks. The woodpeckers were a real treat! The male has a bright red head.  There were several pairs and they stopped all hikers for a few minutes.

Monday we took a bus east for an hour and a half to the Estancia Harberton, the oldest (1886) estancia (ranch) in Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost province of Argentina. The ride was very interesting – extensive peat bogs, beaver dammed rivers, and thick forest. The tour guide, Juan, was a fountain of information, a marine biologist with excellent English. Coming around the last curve there is suddenly an amazing view of the Beagle Channel and Peurto Williams across on the Chileno side.

While the others on the tour took a boat to see a Magellanic penguin colony at isla Martillo, a 20 minute boat ride away, Denny and I toured the museum and estancia. The estancia was a mission originally, started by English missionaries who wanted to “help” the Yamana tribe of native Fuegans. Santiago was our guide around the estancia – another student on summer break working as a guide. He too was invaluable! The story, as he told it, goes like this…

Evidently these Indians did not want to be anglocised and the missionaries found them resistant and sometimes hostile. A young boy, Thomas Bridges, accompanied these missionaries. Thomas came by his name in an interesting way. As a two year old boy he was found abandoned on a bridge. There was a “T” on his shirt so when he was taken in by a religious group, VOILA!, there was decided his name: “Thomas Bridges.” A part of that religious order later was sent here to bring Chistianity to the Fuegan Indians. Thomas accompanied them as a fourteen year old. After the other missionaries gave up and left, Thomas, having learned the Yamana language, stayed on and was able to live peacefully among them. Later he returned to England to become ordained and return with a wife. As his family grew and his success with the natives was recognized, the government gave him 20,000 hectares of land including 20 islands (probably deemed worthless back then to government officials as far away as Buenos Aires). His family and descendants have been here now for four generations with two more generations alive and working on the ranch. They still live or visit and stay in the main house which was originally designed by Thomas’ wife’s father in England. It was built there, tagged, disassembled and then brought here by ship and reassembled.

Over time the estancia has been a lumber center and a sheep farm as well. As Ushuaia grew, people would kill sheep that they came upon. These people as well as red fox and feral dogs began to diminish the herds, so the descendants of the Bridges living on the estancia decided to move all of the remaining sheep to an island where there were no predators, human or otherwise, and good grazing. The sheep get a boat ride twice a year as they are returned for shearing each spring. Some of you may have read Lucas Bridge’s book, Uttermost Part of the Earth: Indians of Tierra Del Fuego,Denny had. It tells of Lucas’ experience growing up mainly among the native Fuegians. We particularly enjoyed walking through the cemetery and reading the names, dates and inscriptions on the markers of the Bridges family, as well as workers and other early settlers of the area. There is even an unknown “NATIVO” marker where bones were reburied when discovered as a building was built. The workshop greatly intrigued Denny as well, and there is a boat house with their orignal “whaler” in it – over one hundred years old and still looking seaworthy.

The highlight of the tour for us though was the “Bones Museum.” Thomas Goodall, the current Bridges descendent living and working the estancia married a Marine biologist, Natalie Prosser, from the US – in fact from Ohio – and can you imagine the coincidence? She graduated from Kent State! No, I didn’t know her there, as she graduated in 1957 with her undergraduate degree and 1962, I think she said, with a graduate degree. She was there working in the lab though and when we were intrioduced to her on our tour I found all this out and we talked about Kent! Small world! For forty plus years she has been collecting carcasses and bones of sea mammals and birds from all over this area. It seems that this part of Argentina that sticks out the furthest south is a natural catch area for anything that dies in the Antarctic Circle. People call her when anything washes ashore. She and her research assistants go to it, take measurements and data, then transport it to the “Bone House” and clean it up for study, safe keeping and/or display. She has many such skeletons in her home in Ushuaia, we are told, plus this spectacular museum at the Eastancia, the Museo Acatushún de Aves y Mamíferos Marinos Australes.

The walls of this warehouse like space are covered with life size paintings of dolphins, porpoises, whales, fur seals, penguins, etc. Hanging just in front of each is a full skeleton and in cases below are parts and pieces, most of which you are still allowed to hold and examine. A research assistant serves as your guide – they alternate one day as a guide and the next in the bone house cleaning. The assistants come from Argentine universities and are working on their research theses. Denny and I were captivated with the displays but then the tour continued through the laboratory, the bone field (parts and pieces laid out) and the bone house (recent acquisitions - ick! the smell!). Evidently “Natalie’s” collection of beaked whales is very rare indeed. The whole place is a special treat!

We ended our day in an Irish Pub overlooking the Ushuaia Bay and ship dock with a cerveza and pollo, tomate, lechuga y huevo sandwich.

Life is good!