Ushuaia
Catamaran Ride to Nowhere
Weather in Tierra del Fuego is highly changeable. Storms and weather systems coming from the Pacific are funneled into the Beagle Channel and head for the Atlantic. Ushuaia sits right on the Beagle Channel. As we were flying out of Buenos Aires, the weather in Ushuaia was sunny and nearly 70. When we landed 3 hours later, it was in the low 40’s, windy and raining....
The plan for arrival in Ushuaia was to take us to a catamaran, on which we would take a short excursion into the Beagle Channel and be served lunch. This was to buy time for the crew to load everyone’s luggage on board and to clean up the Explorer after its last Antarctica excursion of the season, without new passengers underfoot. So, we were duly loaded onto busses, passed the naval station at the site of Thomas Bridges’ original Anglican mission to the area, and delivered to the catamaran. In time, the boat’s captain made the decision that the weather was too poor to venture out. So, we had our lunch sitting on a catamaran in the harbor of Ushuaia. Since we were warmly indoors with a nice view of the city, it was pleasant enough. It might have been nice to wander through a bit of Ushuaia. With a population of 70,000, it’s surprisingly large for being located at the end of the world. But the catamaran’s crew had removed the gangplank, and apparently weren’t going to replace it until it was time to leave for our ship. I suppose that was partially due to getting ready if the boat had left the dock, but also to keep passengers from wandering away into the town just at the time Explorer was ready to cast off lines!
The flight from Buenos Aires was smooth and felt short after the red eye from Miami the day before. Perched in a window seat, I was excited to be able to catch some glances of Patagonia and the Andes. What I didn’t think about was that South America gets so narrow as you go south, most of the trip would be over water. So that’ll have to be for the next trip. I guess we did get to see the very end of the Andes in Tierra del Fuego.
Ushuaia can get pretty windy!
In the evening, we met most of the ship’s staff. They range from oceanographers, to natural and cultural historians, botanists, photographers and marine specialists. The botanist, seemingly a cross between a mad scientist and a homeless person, introduced himself as the guy who will be able tell us what plants on the islands are hallucinogenic and what ones to use when you want to get rid of your cabin mate. The rest seem like they will be equally informative.
Exiting the Beagle Channel, heading for the Atlantic