Beagle Channel

From Ushuaia, we ran out to the ocean twice on two wildlife watching missions. The Beagle Channel is filled with all sorts of Antarctic wildlife, like cormorants, seals, and most excitingly, penguins.

We departed on our first tour to the islands just outside of Ushuaia. The first stop was the old lighthouse, which really isn’t that old, and also still in use. It’s solar powered now, so we didn’t meet any gruff lonely lighthouse keepers, not like that was promised.

The next stop was a couple unnamed (I think) islands that housed hundreds of cormorants (penguin looking flying birds) and tens of seals. The boat chilled out for half an hour or so as we watched the birds watch us. The seals didn’t seem to particularly care about our existence. They just got into a tussle every once in a while, and napped.

Our final stop was Bridge’s island, named after Thomas Bridges. This island had a nice viewpoint, and some edible berries we tried that looked like apples. It was a nice little tour. While at the viewpoint, we watched a massive catamaran unload ~200 people onto the island for their version of the tour. Which was a 100m walk to nowhere important and back. They were all on a similar archipelago tour, but we have no idea how they all ended up on that massive boat. We had 10 with our tour.

The main event was the next day. The Beagle channel is home to over 150,000 Magellan penguins, and many more of other species. One breeding island for the penguins was nearby to Ushuaia, called Isla Magdalena.

Before we could get there, we had to take a bus to another port, where we would depart to see the fluffy birds. Our destination for the ride was Puerto Almanza, a small king crab fishing village home to less than 100. The drive over was scenic, but we slept through most of it.

Puerto Almanza was a nice quaint little village. Just one road in the town, which followed the coast to the pier. Every house and business, which was a couple king crab restaurants, were along this road. Across the channel you could see the actual southernmost settlement in the world, Chile’s Puerto Williams. We hopped in a small yacht (a pontoon really) and began our half hour journey weaving through islands to the breeding grounds.

We won’t keep you waiting. The penguins were great. We must have watched them for an hour, with our boat resting on the shore.

Finally, we had to depart to get back to Ushuaia at any sort of reasonable time. But before we got back to shore, we had one more, unexpected stop. A bunch of seals were having a nap, so we came by to say hi.

We stopped at a little Puerto Almanza restaurant for hot chocolate and croissants, looking out at the channel and landscape. Finally it was time to take the hourlong bus ride back to Ushuaia, which we napped through again.

We were not done with the sea yet though. We had king crab to eat! Our restaurant of choice was a Chinese buffet place, mainly cause it had room. We went straight for the crab, which came out of the tank, into the steamer, and then directly on to the plate. We didn’t get any sauce or anything, just us and the crab.

The lady had to show us how to eat it, as on its own its a little daunting. She hacked it into its legs and claws, and showed us the technique to get the meat out. The meat was very soft and sweet, and had a lot of flavour for there being no other dressings. It was a worthy purchase once, but I don’t think we will need to get it again.

It’s time to turn it up another notch. We’ve got some preparations to do first, but after that, our biggest adventure yet. See you there!