The push to Ushuaia

Push to Ushuaia
It was sad to leave the hotel gang and El Calafate which had a village feel about it and a relaxing air in the town. We were in danger of settling into a routine which would have been a welcome change from packing the dirties into the sackie every three days. Catch a shrunken jet from the airport and make an alarming unscheduled stop in Rio Gallegos which was turbulent but not as turbulent as the landing at Ushuaia..the airport being on the windy tip of land thrusting into the
Beagle channel. Ushuaia sits on the Beagle channel and is the very last town going south before Antartica.
It started life as a penal colony and is now the point of entry for most ships going to Antarctica. It is surrounded by mountains, the Tierra del Fuego National Park and Chile is directly in front of you standing in the dock of the bay.
Its cold!!! Hotel great and straight into town for an AYCE Parilla - its all your sunday roasts in one elongated lamb noshage. I think I ate 10kg of lamb with salad sledges to get it down....Fo has delicate rafts of fish but caves in to Parilla madness inevitably and eats the wrong end of the pantomime horse...still in ketosis though...phew!
The Beagle Channel is a possible haunt of the deft capitano Dampier so we arrange a trip in a yacht up the channel.The weather is more changeable than The Shetland Islands...we leave in warm sunshine amd make for H Island to see the barbecue sites of the Ona Indians. Now they didn´t wear clothes from Primark but smeared themselves in Seal fat and ate the rest of the seals to give themselves a blubbery hi fat protective coat, spending their days fishing around the islands in their birthday suits.
This kept them warm in the perishing winds which whip up the channel. We experience this on the way back as the wind whips in from the west, the journey back is sails reafed and bolt down the portholes. Elka and Fo brace themselves in the rigging at the stern in their yellow popeye suits and we defrost Fo back in port with submarinos (hot chocolate)
The extraordiary feat of navigating through these inlets and channels is something it is impossible to imagine. Drastically changing weather, wind dependent, limited manoevrability and no navigation lights on land in these forbidding passages. My admiration for the 17thC mariners is increasing all the time as we see the difficulties they faces and paltry provisions they travelled with. Coupled with constant in fighting, mutiny and a boat full of alpha males...
Wednesday 21st we take a trip up to the Martial Glacier via a chair lift and a brisk walk up through the moraine. This affords fantastic views of the Beagle Channel although we are only at 1000m. Interestingly, the trees that cover the lower slopes get smaller as you ascend becoming ravishing little Bonsai´s by the time you reach the tree/snowline interface. Autumn is coming also and the leaves are turning giving a lovely red hue to the herbaceous carpet on the lower slopes.
I have an appointment with Dr Gustavo Gonzalez Bonorino at the Cadic Institute in the early evening. He is a charming Sedimentologist and very well known in Chile and world Geologial circles. Even more bizarre, he knows Pat Brenchly, our Sedimentology lecturer at Liverpool Uni and recently gave a talk there...Ole! He is incredibly kind and gives me a brief chat on the geology of the area and a window on the paleoecology of the south of Argentina from the last Ice Age, 20000 - 15000 ya, with the Antarctic Ice sheet lipping in the Beagle channel, the sea level was 130m or so lower (worldwide...sorry)....global warmin...ugh
Anyway thanks to Gustavo for a fascinating 90 minutes.
Thursday is Road Trip day and we pick up Julien, Nicole and hefty supplies from the Supermercado all packed in to a two door ice cooler. We set of on the RN3 through the Tierra del Fuego National Park. Scenery suitable dramatic and the freedom of the open road. Reach Tolhuin which marks the end of the road and the end of civilisation, we turn back, but not without a large helados from the disproportionately large ´Burt Reynolds´ heladeria and Banjo rifts tinkling in our ears...
We drive to the other end of the 3 back through Ushuaia to the western end of the TdF National Park. Beavers introduced for their pelts have multiplied like rabbits, the other abundant resident. With no known predators, its a great place to live.
We visit a beaver dam, puts french engineering in the dark, and find two freshly noshed trees and lie in wait. Its a beaver no show so we leave having not spotted any one of the 90,000 residents. We reward our painstaking research with a meal in the poshest restaurant in town....a change from Lamb and Panto horse, the wines are indomitable...its goodbye to Julien and Nicole for the present...or au revoir we hope...tomorrow Punta Arenas