Ushuaia, Argentina: The wildlife of the Beagle Channel by boat

One of our aims on this trip has been to sample as many outer reaches of the compass as possible around the world, so we were keen to get as far south as we could – which led us to Ushuaia. It is the end of the world, the southernmost city* – as you are often reminded around Ushuaia. There is a lot of ‘Fin del Mundo’ branding on everything here. From Ushuaia, it is only around 1100 kilometres sailing to reach the Antarctic peninsula.

If you were to make the sailing south, you are likely to make first landfall in the area of Elephant Island, which was made famous as the refuge for Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic team of polar explorers before they were subsequently rescued in heroic circumstances in 1917.

Ushuaia is a dominated by the Martial mountain range to the north and the water of the Beagle Channel to the south. The Beagle Channel was first ‘discovered’ (from the European perspective) by Matthew Murray, a lieutenant from HMS Beagle, in 1830. Crucially the channel offers a route between the Atlantic and the Pacific which enables intrepid sailors to avoid the perils of rounding Cape Horn at the southernmost tip of South America where the two oceans meet in an often raging tumult. The route through the Beagle Channel was especially vital prior to the opening of the wonder of engineering that is the Panama Canal in 2914. During our time in Ushuaia we were struck by the frequency and vast size of the cruise liners in the harbour. Each day several new ones would swap places with those which had completed their twenty four hour layover. This results in a steady stream of tourists visiting the attractions of Ushuaia. As well as being an important shipping artery, the Beagle Channel is a haven for all manner of wildlife. Keen to explore and get out onto the water, we went on a half day tour around the nearby islands with one of the smaller of the many tour boats at the quayside.

We cast off alongside our twenty or so shipmates into a chilly morning made all the more frigid by the natural sea breeze. That said, most mornings are brisk in Ushuaia even at the height of summer which is when we visited. Quickly Rafe and Odessa decided it would be best outside in the fresh air and made for the roof of the vessel, and generally this is where they would be found for the majority of the trip. Snow had fallen overnight and settled on the surrounding mountaintops which made for some striking views of Ushuaia with the mountains behind as we left the harbour.

After a short cruise east along the channel our first stop was Alice Island (Isla Alicia). As we approached some of the rocks appeared to be moving, which we soon realised was actually several large sealions lounging there. They would occasionally bark at each other and often seemingly at nothing in particular. We got a great view from our excellent, but breezy, vantage point on the roof of the boat.

From Alice Island it was on to the aptly named Birds’ Island (Isla de los Pajaros), where a mass of cormorants have made their home. In the distance we could see a lighthouse atop an island in the middle of the channel, and this was to be our next destination. Along the way we spotted several pairs of Magellanic Penguins swimming along channel, much to Dessa’s delight.

Built in 1919, opened in 1920 and still vital today, Les Eclaireurs lighthouse guides shipping away from a treacherous group of small islands in the middle of the channel. The picture perfect lighthouse has been used to illustrate some editions of Jules Verne’s The Lighthouse at the End of the World, although he actually had a different and simpler lighthouse from Isla de Los Estados, further east in Tierra del Fuego in mind when he penned the novel. Around the base of the lighthouse are the remains of the Monte Cervantes cruise ship which was wrecked in 1930 after failing to heed the advice of the lighthouse. All 1500 passengers and crew survived the incident, although the captain did disappear afterwards in suspicious circumstances. The survivors had to be put up in Ushuaia for over a week, quite the event as at this time the population of the town was only 800, and half of those were in the jail. Every home, public building and bunks in the prison were utilised to provide shelter for the survivors. The Les Eclaireurs islands are also home to more cormorants and a few metres away on Sea Lions Island (Isla de los Labos) a large number of sea lions and fur seals rest on the rocks.

For the final stop on the tour, we docked at Bridges Island where people are permitted to disembark and walk to the top of the small hill. Aside from a small corrugated iron shelter and jetty there is nothing else but flora, fauna and the weather. Fortunately for us it was dry and not too breezy during our time there.

We enjoyed learning about the local plant life, Dessa carefully touching the yareta, a mat-like alpine plant that grows barely a millimetre a year and is usually found at much higher altitudes in the Andes. We stopped to sample dark blue calafate berries and chaura (also called wild apples and resembling the shape of tiny apples). We carefully chose the pale pink and white berries for the sweetest flavour. Spending some time here, with the staggering views, nature, fresh air and silence capped off a great day.

How we did it

There are several boat tour operators with huts gathered on the quayside in town. We went with Patagonia Adventure Explorer for the boat tour into the Beagle Channel. They seemed to focus strongly on the diverse flora and fauna, have a smaller boat for a slightly more intimidate experience and were also a little cheaper. This was especially true for us as they gave a 50% discount for kids which was more than some of the other operators. They don’t go out for the extra hour or more to get to the penguin colony at Isla Martillo – Rafe and Odessa were happy to trade not seeing these particular penguins. When we went it cost us 13k ARS per adult, and 6.5k ARS for each child. Plus the 350 ARS tax each.

*Chile disputes Ushuaia’s claim to being the southernmost city, pointing out the demonstrably true fact that Puerto Williams just a couple of kilometres on the the opposite shore of the Beagle Channel is indeed further south. But does Puerto Williams count as a city? One thing is for sure, during our visit it was not possible to make the crossing to Puerto Williams despite our best efforts, apparently because the Chilean customs office had not yet reopened after COVID. It seems the Chilean border force has not yet been able to find anyone willing to staff and reopen the remote outstation.