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Feb 11, 2013 -

Today was our travel day over the border to Chile. Our goal was to take a boat into Puerto Navarindo (Point B) and then go by car to Puerto Williams (Point C), where we would stay at Lakutaia Lodge.

In this part of the world, the Chilean and Argentine government aren’t the closet friends, so there’s a lot of paperwork and delays that make a simple boat crossing turn into an all day affair. We were at the Ushuaia port in the morning as we were told, however, we had to wait an hour or so before we could board the boat to Chile.

The boat was quite nice:

And I guess the ride was smooth enough, that on a 30 minute boat ride, Kolina and my Mom fell asleep.

When we arrived, it was raining.

As you can see, it’s a small port.

And this is the main building. There was only a small waiting area that was already filled with a few other backpackers who had arrived before us and were also waiting for a ride to town. Not sure I got such a great impression of the Chilean government system from this experience. Kolina and I killed the time by reading.

Eventually a few large vans did come and we loaded up the vans to head to down. The entire path was unpaved and bumpy – moving the distance took over an hour but the road hugged the Beagle Channel, so it was nice and scenic. We eventually arrived in town – it’s billed the southernmost city in the world (although Ushuaia also lays claim to this) with fishing and military making up its primary occupants. We first had to stop at the customs and immigration center to get our passports stamped.

Finally, we made it to Lakutaia – it was nearly 2PM but we had an excellent welcome lunch. It appeared we were the only guests using the lodge.

 Steak, eggs, and fries? Yes please! 

The view outside was gorgeous – the property was green from the rains and the inlet of water led directly to the Beagle Channel. There were also a few horses roaming the property that guests could ride (we didn’t).

Our afternoon activity was a tour of a nearby ethnobotanical reserve. A few graduate students from the University of Texas were our guides – they were studying birds and plants in the preserve and pointed out a lot of interesting things on our short hike. Our main guide was really into moss and spoke at length about the different species in the forest. The choice quote from all of this was when she asked us “Do any of you have any questions?” and Marco, one of the travelers in the group, said to me, “Not anymore.”

This moss was apparently a very rare and smelly moss. She encouraged us to get close to smell it. I didn’t really smell anything so I’m convinced she was just playing a cruel joke on us.

What we were looking at:

More investigatory work that reaffirmed that I probably made the right decision to not become a scientist.

Holden’s been busy. We attempted to take him up Mission Peak a few weeks ago. He got up about 1.5 miles before we got worried he wouldn’t have the lung capacity to make it back down. As it turns out, he started panting a bunch so I picked him up…at which point he stopped panting. I put him down and he started panting again. I think my dog is smarter than I thought…

Holden made friends with a cow.

Lazy pug. Also, go Stanford!

Holden’s not the new dog in the office anymore! Meet Halo, a retriever only a few weeks old. She’s cute and shy. And hard to capture since she moves so much.

Today I took Holden to the dog park. Of course, he ignored all of the other dogs and just played fetch.

No words to describe.

After the amazing penguins on the first day in Ushuaia, I recall admitting during dinner that I didn’t think the trip could get any better. Boy, was I proven wrong.

In the morning we took a boat out to Isla H – a private island that only the tour company we traveled with can land on. (this is their website). The tour company was family run and their mother was watching the main booth while the son captained the boat that took us out to the island. Apparently his father compiled some important books on the island marine life and was given the island through the Argentina government for research and use.

On the way to the island we visited various points in the Beagle Channel, stopping to observe the birds and a colony of sea lions and cormorants. Both peacefully co-existed on this rock:

There were plenty of birds flying around, which made for excellent photos:

The island itself was barren with no real dock – we literally had to climb up the side of the cliff to get on a small trail.

As our guide jokingly said, this is their version of the Hollywood H:

The terrain of the island is similar to a high altitude mountain due to the consistency of the soil and rocks. We found a sheltered area where the guide said natives used to camp out in. They apparently swam naked in the cold water and consumed nearly 6000 calories a day with their diet!

As we walked around the island we were surrounded by beautiful views of the region. At the top we found a small nesting area for cormorants – their nests are made of dung and are built on top of one another over hundreds of years. A dung nest a meter or so high represents nearly 500 years of nesting. The birds were very cooperative while we took photos.

In the late afternoon we visited Tierra del Fuego National Park. The park as what is claimed to be the southernmost post office in the world. It’s situated on a dock that’s over the water – a very picturesque view.

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking along a trail that hugged the channel. I was able to tired out my arm skipping rocks.

Finally, we had dinner at Chez Manu which was a restaurant that overlooked the town. I had some delicious crab ravioli and some excellent blueberry liquor for dessert.

Picture of king crab. Get in my belly!

Today’s excursion was to La Isla Martillo, an island full of penguins! It’s about an hour away from Ushauia and the land is part of Estancia Harberton, a family that is fortunate enough to have owned the land when the penguins started to nest on the island.

Luckily the family cares about conversation, so they only let one tour company take tourists onto the island. A lot of tour companies in Ushuaia will promise penguins on their tours; only one will actually let you off the boat and walk on the island. Here’s our pass for Piratour, the company that took us onto the island – keep this in mind if you yourself ever go to Ushuaia!

After arriving at the estancia, we boarded a small boat that held around 25 people and took a 10 minute boat ride to the island.

Then: PENGUINS!

Penguins with mountains in the background.

Penguins in the grass. A young penguin cleaning itself.

A penguin chillin in the grass.

A penguin chillin on the park bench:

A penguin checking out my 200MM lens:

A penguin deep in thought

A penguin wondering why his buddies aren’t getting into the water with him

Waddling penguin!

Looking for its mate:

My favorite – a sleepy penguin standing near a signpost.

Penguin hiding in its nest.

Well, I think you get the point. Our guide estimated there were 3,000 breeding pairs of Magellanic penguin on the island and around 100 gentoo penguins. It’s one of the only penguin colony’s near Ushuaia and it’s also growing – they do fear that at some point the population will reach a peak and penguins will start to fight over nesting ground. For now they seem quite cordial – we saw plenty digging in the ground, waddling around, and making a ton of noise. As a tour group, we walked on a set path and weren’t allowed to touch the penguins – many were thus comfortable with our presence and were more than happy to pose for photos.

The estancia also has a small museum and research facility – a researcher/student showed us a lot of skeletons of dolphins, whales, large fish. I guess the specimen are so prevalent, because he let us pick them up – some of the bones were incredibly light.

In the afternoon we checked out the local Museums – one was Museo del Fin del Mundo, which chronicled some of the history of Ushuaia, starting from the indigenous people who lived on the island to the prisoners who helped build the city.

Dinner at at Kaupe, a restaurant with an incredible view of the city from its hilltop location. My black buttered Patagonian sea bass was pretty awesome:

Finally, since it was still fairly early when we were done with dinner, a few of us headed to a nearby bar – which of course was an Irish themed bar. They sold locally brewed Beagle beer and a sign wonderfully captured an Irish Darwin who is their mascot.

Today was actually a half day of travel as we were flying south to Ushuaia. That means moving from point A to point B on the map.

The 3.5 hour flight definitely speaks to the size of Argentina. Ushuaia calls itself the southern most city in the world (although in Chile, Puerto Williams is technically more southern but smaller). Nevertheless, it’s still a substantial city, with nearly 60,000 people. It’s bordered by the Martial mountain range to the north and the Beagle Channel to the south. It’s also a port for tourists heading to Antarctica. Every day we saw a large ship pulling into or out of the port, which was strongly correlated with Internet speed.

When we arrived in Ushuaia we met our guide, Dom, who would accompany us for the next few weeks. We took taxis to our hotel, Alto Andino and checked in. From our room, we were greeted with this view:

Can’t complain with this view – you could see the city, the Beagle Channel, and the surrounding mountains.

We spent the afternoon on a mini-hike up to see the Martial Glacier. The hike starts at the bottom of a ski lift – we were too late to catch the lift up so we walked up until we hit the end of the lift. We were treated to a gorgeous view of the area.

For dinner we ate at a restaurant called Kuar. It’s located right on the water and we were able to watch the sun set. It was also our first chance to have the local king crab. Fresh and delicious!