Ushuaia and Calafate

Hi everyone! We took a 5-day trip this weekend to southern Patagonia. Our first stop was the city of Ushuaia in the province of Tierra del Fuego. Ushuaia is considered the southernmost city in the world, and has a population of 56,000. It is the gateway to Antarctica, and a very important port for ships going there, or cruise ships going around Cape Horn.

We are heading into fall here in the Southern Hemisphere, and while highs in BA are probably in the 80's, temperatures in Ushuaia have been in the 40's (not including the ever present windchill. Glad we came in the summer!

Our first day in town we took a boat tour of the Beagle Channel. The Beagle Channel was one of the three navigable passages between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans (before the Panama Canal came along in 1914, these were your only options). The Strait of Magellan lies just to the north, and the Drake Passage to the south (pretty much the open water between South America and Antarctica, very treacherous). It was named after the HMS Beagle, which explored it and the surrounding waters in the late 1820's, and which had a young amateur naturalist on board named Charles Darwin. We observed some natural activity ourselves: Sea lions sunning themselves on the rocks and blue-eyed cormorants trying to keep seagulls from eating their eggs.

The next day's activity was visiting Tierra del Fuego National Park, Picture 1 (the southernmost national park in the world! Gotta love that new adjective: "Southernmost"). The park is mostly sub-polar forest, and has (surprisingly to me) hardly any pine trees. Instead, there are three types of deciduous beeches that grow there. It was raining during most of our 3-hour trek through the forest, but we were by ourselves almost the entire time, and we kept thinking we were going to run into Tolkein elves or dwarves around every corner.

Well, we did run into something...Mike shouts "Hey! I think that's a wolf!" It was a HUGE Andean fox, at least 25 pounds, and it walked right in front of Mike with a catch in its mouth (looking quite pleased with itself, really). It was kind of crazy, luckily it just kept walking by, not even stopping to stare at us (though Mike said he was definitely looking at him).

The next day we caught a flight an hour north to El Calafate, a city like Ushuaia that runs off of tourism, but much smaller -- only 18,000 residents (warmer temperatures though, in the 50's and 60's). They didn't even have an airport until 2001, and have only really started developing since then. El Chalten to the north (a jumping-off point for Mt. Fitz Roy hikers) wasn't even a city till 1980's. It is the newest city in all of Argentina.

Our Calafate tour guide pointed out that when people hear "Patagonia," they picture ice and glaciers, when in fact 95% of Patagonia is actually a very arid steppe, with no trees and hardly any water. And -- Patagonia is a huge swath of land, filling the latitude equivalent between Boston and the Labrador Strait. Maybe a bit more.

But don't worry, we saw the glaciers! I tried to get a picture of the steppe too, Picture 4, but every time we drive though it I fall asleep, so the "arid" picture you see below has way too much water and too many green bushes.

The "mother glacier" that feeds the glacier we saw (and dozens of others) is actually called an ice shield, and forms in the mountains. Picture 2 and 3 below are of the Perito Moreno glacier. As the glacier grows at the base of the mountain (snow and rain collect and compact), the ice is pushed forward and on the end crashes into the lake. We actually saw several pieces of the glacier crash into the lake during our 2 hours there, which shocked me; that glacier really is moving! Since the glacier is continually breaking off, but regrowing in the mountains from the snow, it hasn't really seen effects of global warming, as do other glaciers around the world. But we took lots of pictures just in case.

The snow and ice in the glacier is under so much pressure, that the air bubbles are squeezed out, and pure, clear ice remains. All the other colors at the red end of the spectrum are absorbed, and we are left with a deep blue/purple (which doesn't show up on film nearly as incredibly as it did in real life!).

Speaking of (if you've actually read this WHOLE thing)......who's coming to visit? Southern Patagonia is only a few hours' flight from BA, and there are activities for all ages and skill levels! From riding in a boat to hiking one of the most difficult mountains in this hemisphere! Come on down! But probably wait until next "summer." I don't fancy my chances down here in July.