The End of the World…well almost…Ushuaia!!

So after many days of travelling down through the beautiful countries of Argentina and Chile we finally reached the end of the world!! Well technically its not really the end of the world, there are a few small towns south of Ushuaia and obviously if you can afford to get there Antarctica is technically the end of the world OR technically there is no end of the world as it is round and has no beginning and no end!! ANYWAY it is the “Southern Most City in the World” and they are proud of it!!

Mostly Ushuaia is just a stop off town for those lucky enough to be heading to the Antarctica or for large cruise ships full of old, rich Americans cruising around South America. We went to see the Tierra del Fuego national park which is just outside the town but to be honest the scenery on the way down was mind blowing and this was a nice park for a Sunday stroll but nothing compared with the views we had seen in the past few weeks!! We did see our first beaver en-route though (look very closely in the picture on the left!!) and the damage they can do is unbelievable.

They did have a really cool penguin colony on an island in the middle of the famous ‘Beagle Channel’. We took a tour which brought us by mini bus passed some crazy looking trees (shows how strongs the wind get down there in the winter!!!) to the Harberton estancia. This estancia had a very interesting aquatic museum and the marine biologist who was working there was so passionate about it you couldn’t but get excited about it. It had an amazing collection of dolphin, penguin and whale skeletons and she showed us deformities in the bones which the mother and daughter dolphins shared and ones which died of arthritis etc. Her job was finding local dead animals, documenting their cause of death and then clearing the carcass to get the skeleton and she was soooooooooooooooooo excited about it!!! Takes all sorts of people!!

 After that we headed for a short boat trip across the Beagle Channel to Isla Martillo. The penguins hang out here to breed during the summertime (by the way summer in Ushuaia means max temp 15degC!!!!). When we jumped off the boat at the shore the penguins were there to greet us in their 1000’s, they weren’t shy that’s for sure and some seriously posed for the cameras as you will see from the photos. There were 2 types of penguins, the Magellanic and the Gentoo penguins, and the Gentoos were definitely the coolest with their beautiful bright orange beaks and the little fluffy babies were so cute!! I also got a cool pic of a Petrel (I think!!). It was diving towards me and I fell on my ass but somehow still managed to click the button!!

 

When we got back to Ushuaia we chilled out and had some penguin cakes and coffee -yummy!!!

We had done some investigating on doing an Antarctica tour if there were any “Amazing Special Offers” but as an icebreaker boat had crashed the week we were there all the passengers of that boat had filled up the other boats so that trip will have to be left for another time!!!