Patagonia: Ushuaia

After being thrust into social interaction with my fellow LC students in Torres del Paine, I returned to my solo traveling, taking a bus from Puerto Natales, Chile, to Ushuaia, Argentina. Getting that far down south involves taking a ferry to cross over from the mainland to Tierra del Fuego, the region home to both the Chilean and Argentine provinces of the same name. On the bus down I was seated next to an older French woman named Danielle with whom I chatted a little. I liked her for her friendliness and cheer, but her remark that she liked Chile better than Argentina because of the overall higher standard of living gave me a little pause. That seemed a rather shallow reason to prefer a country in my opinion. That being said, she was an older woman traveling by herself, which was very inspiring.

I’m a big fan of long car and bus rides. I love staring out of windows for extended periods of time, and one of the best parts of doing that traveling through Patagonia has been getting to observe the changes in landscape as I’ve criss-crossed between Chile and Argentina and gone further and further south. Going from Puerto Natales to Ushuaia, the landscape began flat and arid, a scrubby, desert-ish landscape without many trees that was reminiscent of parts of my home New Mexico. As we went further south, trees appeared, the landscape grew greener, and the earth became less flat. Multitudes of snowy peaks emerged as we got closer to Ushuaia. Ushuaia is known as the furthest south city in the world. It’s an interesting place, surrounded by beautiful wintry mountains but with an expensive touristy feel aimed at the many who go on cruises to Antarctica, Ushuaia being the launching point for the majority of those. I was only in Ushuaia for a few days, primarily to see the penguins. I booked a trip to Isla Martillo, an island about an hour and a half away from the city which, in the southern hemisphere’s summer, is home to a large penguin colony.

We first stopped at Estancia Harberton, a ranch that originally belonged to the British man who came to the area years before. The ranch maintains a marine museum and research center, in which many skeletons of penguins, whales, and seals were on display.

A short boat ride took us from Estancia Harberton to Isla Martillo, which was really unlike anything I’ve ever done. The second you get on the island, the beach is just covered in black and white little creatures tottering around. They were amazingly cute. The majority of penguins on Isla Martillo are Magellan penguins, which are the fully black and white penguins you see in my photos. There are also a lot of Papua penguins, which are black and white but have orange feet and beaks. I also got very lucky in that there were three King penguins on the island, which is rare, as they don’t usually inhabit islands near Ushuaia. King penguins are bigger than Magellan and Papua penguins and have yellow on their necks and heads, and with longer, thinner beaks that are pinkish on the sides. We walked around the island as our guide spouted a steady stream of info about the island and the traits of its penguin inhabitants. We also saw adolescent penguins, distinguishable because they are brown instead of black and appear much fuzzier than their grown counterparts, as they haven’t lost their feathers yet. They flapped their wings as they tottered around with their poor balance and made their squawking mating sounds, which sound remarkably like the braying of donkeys. They really were incredibly cute and strange. I’d never been so close to any other creature that at all resembles penguins.

• argentina
• isla martillo
• patagonia
• penguins
• photos
• tierra del fuego
• travel
• ushuaia