Beagle Channel: Harberton Farm

At the end of the Beagle Channel cruise off the coast of Ushuaia, we visited Harberton Farm, one of the oldest Estancias in this region. Besides being stunningly pretty, with sweeping vistas of daisy fields and grazing horses, this farm has a lot of historical significance as well.



It was constructed in 1886 by Reverend Thomas Bridges, who had a close relationship with the native Yamana people (see this post for more about the Yamana.) He authored the first Yamana-English dictionary, which has helped preserve this language whose native speakers have almost completely died out.



The 150-year old main house was constructed in England, brought in pieces by ship to Ushiaia and re-assembled here. Along with the house, lupins were also brought to Argentina and were first grown here. The Estancia garden was filled with their color when we visited.



This farm was a safe haven for the native Yamana and Selk'nam people, who were otherwise treated quite badly by the settlers. They found work here, and could live on this farm with dignity. Upon their death, they were buried alongside the family, all in one common grave. The crosses marked "Native" belong to the graves of the Yamana who lived on the farm.



Today the farm is owned by Tommy Goodall (Thomas Bridges' great-grandson), and his American-born wife Natalie Prosser, a famous biologist. The traditional activities in the farm have long come to a stop, but relics from those days are visible everywhere.



Now the main activity on the Estancia is tourism. I couldn't get enough of the beautiful scenery there. The deep blue of the peaceful waters and sky, lush green fields filled with white and yellow daisies and wildflowers, horses grazing lazily in the warm sunshine, and the timelessness of the place itself.

Though there were no daffodils there, Wordsworth's poem played itself in my mind, and I tried to retain the sights in my memory, for when I am in a "vacant or pensive mood" later.







Have a peaceful day.

A day cruise on the Beagle Channel

The Beagle Channel separates the largest island in Tierra del Fuego from some of its smaller islands. This strait is 240 kilometres long, with a minimum width of about 5 kilometres.

Many companies offer day cruises on the channel from Ushuaia, to visit some historic locations and to see the channel's famous inhabitants - the sea lions and Magellanic penguins.

When we arrived at Ushuaia's beautiful pier early in the morning, the sky was overcast and metallic grey. I wondered if it would just rain the whole day and we would have to see the sights through the boat's rain-spattered windows.



As we pulled away from the pier, it started drizzling, and all of us crowded into the room below. It rains most of the time in Ushuaia, so no one was perturbed. Though a little disappointed, I decided I would still make the most of it, even if it rained the whole day.

Thankfully though, the rain stopped within the next hour, and we could see the clouds lifting at the distant horizon. Though there was a cold, wet wind still blowing, we bundled up and went up to the deck to watch the dark grey waters and the cloud covered mountains in the distance.



Soon we passed the Eclaireurs Light House standing on a small island. Bright orange lichen covered the rocks, contrasting beautifully with the blue and white surroundings. This old light house dates back to 1919 and is one of the landmarks of Ushuaia.



The Beagle Channel was named after the famous ship HMS Beagle on which Darwin first sailed as an amateur naturalist from 1826 to 1830. The ship's mission was to survey the coasts of the southern part of South America. When the ship reached the channel on 29 January 1833, Darwin first saw the region's glaciers and wrote in his field notebook "many glaciers beryl blue most beautiful contrasted with snow."

We tried looking at the scenery through his eyes, as the first colony of penguins, sea lions and gulls came into view, framed by snowcapped peaks at the horizon.



It was snooze-time for the sea lions and they lay basking on the rocks, enjoying the cold, brisk wind that froze my fingers!



Tiny penguins briskly walked around on the cluster of rocks, going about their day as we gawked at them from our boat.



We next arrived at what appeared to be beach day at the penguin colony. They were out on the sand, soaking in the watery sunlight, with adults just lying around rolling in the sand while the young ones chased each other, diving into the water.



Most of them were busy preening themselves and looking cute for the camera.



But some waddled up close to the boat and stared at us with their cute, smiling faces. I so wished I could communicate with them!



There were a few that stood there with their eyes tightly shut, probably praying that we'd be gone when they opened them again.



We were all very quiet, and the only sounds were from the water lapping at the sides of the boat or from the racket created by the penguins themselves. The sun had come out by now and was slowly spreading its warmth around us.



It is such a beautiful world out there! Even as we hurry back to our lives in the concrete jungles of the world, these penguins and sea lions will still be here in these tranquil surroundings. Our wasteful actions will deplete the quality of their air and water, and will change their climate. But they will never realize it.



We soon left the penguin beach behind and headed over to Henderson Farm, a historic landmark of Ushuaia. More about that in the next post.

P.S. I am busy trying to make some progress on my thesis, because of which my posts and blog visits have become less frequent. Once I get a chunk of work done, I hope to have more time ...

Hope you are all doing well.

Ushuaia by Night

I have been limiting my time spent on reading/writing blog articles to about once or twice a week, because it was getting out of control! So though I may not read/comment on your posts at once, I will get to it once a week.

In my previous post I had written a little bit about Ushuaia - the city at the End of the World. It was nice to see your interest in my travel stories.

We visited Argentina in the summer (Dec-Jan), and since Ushuaia's latitude is 54 degrees south, we had sunlight until almost 11pm every day! It was wonderful to have the loooong days, because we could fit so much into each day, and then have time for even more before we had to get to bed.

For local kids of course, this is incredible because they can play outside for that much longer. As we were walking to our room at around 10:30 pm one night, we saw boys playing soccer in a field, and stopped for a bit to watch them. The setting was so idyllic, with the mountains surrounding us.



Jude had asked about Ushuaia's economy. The city does get a large part of its revenue through tourism. But there is also livestock farming, fishing, lumbering (yes - from the lovely old growth forests of Tierra del Fuego), and eletronic goods firms. So while food is expensive here, electronic goods are pretty cheap - we didn't try to buy any, but read about this somewhere.

One evening we set out with my tripod, to take some night pictures of the pier in the city. It is a spectacular location for night shots, since the pier is surrounded by snow capped mountains. Unfortunately, it was a cloudy day, but you can imagine how amazing it would be to have a full moon in the sky casting its reflection in the water as well ...



This bright red boat kept moving and I had to wait to get it in the position I wanted for this picture.


The pier in Ushuaia comes alive at night, with twinkling lights from the city and the matching lights from the boats that softly bob on the waters.



It was almost midnight before we had darkness, and by then the streets near the pier were pretty empty. The sky was very overcast, as you can see in the previous picture. Since we were there for just about five days, and it was raining on and off most of the time, we had to made do with the weather we had for these pictures.



From Ushuaia, we went on a few interesting day trips. The best day was spent hiking in Tierra del Fuego national park - the southernmost in the world. We also went on a day cruise on the Beagle Channel to see the penguins and sealions there, and a visit to the Haberton Farm which was truly idyllic. More on these trips in later posts ...

Hope you enjoyed the Spring weather over the weekend.

Ushuaia - The End of the World

In an earlier post I had written about Tierra del Fuego, the archipelago at the southern tip of South America. Even just a hundred years ago, this region was untouched and exactly as it has been over centuries. But now it is completely transformed and the ancient people have almost completely died out or mixed in with the European people who settled here in the 20th century.

Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego is a modern city now and holds the title "Fin del Mundo" or "End of the World". There is one Chilean city even south of Ushuaia, called Punta Arenas. But Ushuaia in Argentina claimed the title first.


Arriving in Ushuaia is an experience in itself, because of the dramatic approach to the city. Flights from the mainland skim low over the southern tip of the Andes before dipping down into the cluster of islands, landing on a tiny airstrip that runs from tip to tip across a small island!

This landing is often rough due to the constant strong winds in this area, and I was quite nervous. So I left my camera in the overhead bin fully expecting to be jostled about. But the landing turned out to be perfect, and absolutely smooth. Others we met who landed the very next day said they didn't have such a smooth landing, and so we were pretty lucky.

The plane almost skimmed the water's surface on its gentle approach, and just as I thought we would be landing in water, we touched down on the tip of the island on a bright and sunny day. Since I couldn't get up to get my camera, I have no pictures, but here's one from our take-off, when we left Ushuaia.



The city is surrounded by snow-capped mountains, and has variable weather always. It can go from sunny and warm to breezy, cold and rainy in hours, and one has to be prepared.

Lupins were in bloom everywhere when we visited in January, and the city was absolutely beautiful. Lupins are not native to this region though, and were introduced by European settlers.



We stayed at a little bed & breakfast which was a 15 minute walk from the main downtown area of the city. These red lupins were on either side of our door.



Here are some more pictures of the bursts of color we saw all over the town as we walked around. I couldn't resist taking pictures of them!




We walked several miles every day getting to and from the downtown area, because we got almost all our meals from the only ALL vegetarian take-out place in Ushiaia - called El Bambu.



We found it really hard to find vegetarian food that I could trust in Argentina. The only pasta dish we would find in the restaurants in Patagonia would usually smell odd, but I would eat it quickly without delving into details about the ingredients, because I didn't have many other options. Then we took to cooking our meals at our hostel, but after a long day's hiking, cooking isn't the easiest chore!

So we really appreciated the delicious, affordably priced food at El Bambu!



Most Antarctic cruises start from Ushuaia, and the port is stunning at night. I took my tripod out there one night and took some pictures of the night lights at the port. More of that in the next post.

Here's one more lupin picture before I end this post!

The ancient people of Tierra del Fuego

Tierra del Fuego is an archipelago off the southern tip of the South American continent, and is made up of several small islands that are exposed to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, as well as the cold currents from Antarcica to the south.

This is a windswept land where winters are freezing cold and summers are cool, where a day can change from sunny and pleasant to bitterly cold with gale-force winds within hours.


Yet, this fascinating land has been occupied by humans for more than 12,000 years now. Nomadic hunter gatherers crossed a land bridge from the main continent to get here all those years ago, before the sea level rose and separated the islands from the mainland.

Their descendants, the Mannekenk and Selknam (or Ona) people still lived here in 1869 when the first white settler founded an Anglican Mission in Tierra del Fuego. Since then, the indigenous people who had lived here for so long, have quickly died out, due to exposure to different ways, diseases and so on.



All that remains is a small, modest museum in the city of Ushuaia, which tells their history in simple, but carefully prepared displays that at best look like school projects of gifted children.

In contrast, the more recent history of this area is displayed in larger museums (with steeper entrance fees).

The Yamana Museum

We skipped visiting the more recent museums, but spend a large part of an afternoon inside the Yamana museum. No one else visited while we were there. We were told to take as many pictures of the displays as we wanted, so I took a lot of them. It's a good way to encourage sharing of the fascinating history of these cultures.

The Yamana: Canoe people of the Beagle Channel

The Yamana or Yaghan people were still living their traditional lives in Tierra del Fuego 150 years ago, so this isn't ancient history.

They were sea-going people who spent long periods aboard their canoes, living off the sea. While out on the ocean, the men hunted seals from the prow, while the women collected shellfish from the oceans.




The fact that utterly fascinates me is that only the women could swim. And since the Yamana didn't wear any clothes, these amazing women took to the icy waters with only seal grease protecting them from the cold! It was so cold even in the summer while we visited, that it is mind boggling to me that these women were so tough.



The Yamana always carried fire with them, even on to the canoes. They set the fire in a space in the middle of their canoes. This was so that they could instantly start a larger fire once they arrived on land, since it was always so cold.



The arrival of European settlers in 1884 mostly wiped out the Yamana due to a measles epidemic. Also, the Yamana way of life was very finely tuned to the environment they lived in, and had been honed over hundreds of years. When well-meaning missionaries tried to clothe them, the Yamana contracted pneumonia from the damp clothes that they wore, since their sea-faring ways didn't match the clothes they were given.



The last of the Yamana, Abuela Rosa, died in 1982. Some descendants of the Yamana still live in Tierra del Fuego, but there is only one surviving speaker of the Yamana language alive today.

The Selknam

The Selknam or Ona were powerful, fearless people who also lived in Tierra del Fuego at the same time as the Yamana. The community hunted guanacos, eating the meat and fashioning clothes out of the guanaco skin. They were expert hunters who used bows and arrows with great skill.



When European settlers arrived here in the 1880s and set up sheep farms, they fenced off large areas of Selknam land, and prohibited entry to the native people. This led to conflict, especially when the Selknam started hunting the sheep, since any animal was fair game to them.

This unfortunately led to a systematic genocide of the Selknam people. Headhunters were paid money for bringing in heads of the Selknam they had killed, with bonuses paid for pregnant women. The heads were even shipped off to collectors and museums in Europe. Poisoned meat was also given to the Selknam in the attempt to get rid of them.



In 1881 around when Tierra del Fuego was first colonized, about 3500 Selknam people lived on the big island of Tierra del Fuego. By the late 1920s, the hundred or so of the Selknam that remained, had to succumb to acculturization.

The last two pure-blooded Selknam: Lola Kiepje and Esteban Yshton passed away in the late 1960s.

For the whole time that we were in Tierra del Fuego in the city of Ushuaia, I felt a little disconnected from the modern city around me. It was cold and rainy on most days, and as we walked up to high glaciers and hiked in the forests, I felt the presence of these ancient people around me. I kept trying to see this land through their eyes. What a great loss it is to us that their culture is no more!

PS: The photos above are the ones I took from displays at the museum. I don't know who the original photographers were.