Many years after Charles Darwin did it and thousands of excited tourists too, I went on a boat along the Beagle Channel. The boat was a glossy gin palace with rows of comfortable seats inside, trilingual crew and a small bar dispensing nasty coffee and nice biscuits. It was packed - I went outside and upstairs where there was a small VIP lounge and sat on the deck.
Even though the spirit of adventure has gone now with a dozen tour operators offering similar trips in Ushuaia and the tourist pier lined with shiny boats, it was a mesmering ride. The sun came out and the dark blue waters of the sea were glinting and calm. Either side of the narrow strip of the channel rise up low green hills and towering white mountains - some Argentinian, some Chilean. We stopped at Bird Island which was covered in cormorants and sea lions basking on the rocks - the air stank with choking, rancid bird shit and a hundred cameras whirred and zoomed and clicked.
When we reached Penguin Island the cameras went into overdrive and the obliging but slightly world weary penguins posed in cute positions. Some waddled into the water. Those birds swim like fishes! They shot underwater and streaked through the sea.
Our last stop was Estancia Harberton, founded by a British missionary. Its a very picturesque farm, set right on the sea, surrounded by beech woods and grassy lawns. Our guide told us lots of interesting stuff in garbled English - the farm is 50,000 acres big, it used to be a sheep ranch, it took a month to round them all up to be sheared, some stayed on a island and the horses used to gather them had to swim across.. We returned to Ushuaia via 'flag trees' - blown by the wind into flag shapes, a hidden lake (which wasn't) and a place where Argentina's head musher breeds huskies and practises for the big Alaskan dog sled race.
I was exhausted by all the animal watching - the birds! the penguins! the sheep! the dogs! but had to run from our bus to catch another - yes, I'm moving on.
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