Cruising Around Tierra Del Fuego

In late January 2020, my wife and I embarked on a five-day cruise aboard the Ventus Australis (https://www.australis.com/en/why-australis/our-fleet/), a small, two-hundred passenger ship, that would take us on a cruise from Ushuaia, Argentina, through the Magellan Strait, Beagle Canal, and Drake Passage to Puente Arenas, Chile. The ship's route wound through the Tierra del Fuego archipelago at the southern tip of South America, and it offered Zodiac raft expeditions so passengers could leave the ship and explore islands and glaciers in the region.

Ushuaia, the city of departure, is remarkable primarily because of its extreme location at the southern tip of South America. Until recent decades, Argentina had difficulty persuading its citizens to settle there, and for awhile used the area as a penal colony for its most incorrigible and dangerous criminals. The hope was the convicts would serve out their sentences and stay there as settlers. Today, restaurants, shops, and pleasant hotels form a central commercial neighborhood, and cater to tourists waiting to embark on a cruise to Antarctica or to explore the South American coast. Still, despite Ushuaia's recent success, it's hard to imagine actually living there.

The cruise itself was awesome, in the true meaning of the word - extremely impressive, inspiring, excellent. The ship and its cabins were comfortable, the food was quite good, the open bar was a pleasant place to hang out between expeditions, and fellow passengers were all there to learn something about the world and to have an adventure.

Ventus Australis sailed during the night and dropped anchor at daybreak. At about 7:00 in the morning, a guide's voice would come over the intercom to announce the ship's location, the first expedition of the day, and time of departure. After breakfast, passengers and guides would gather on deck to board the rafts. Simple enough, but the crew took great care to instruct passengers on how to get from the rolling ship into the bouncing rafts, a procedure they called the "cha-cha" because it involved precise placement of feet and grappling of arms. Once loaded, the raft would shove off from the ship and head for the first expedition of the day. After lunch, there would be another expedition to a different adventure.

Our first expedition was to Cape Horn, on Hornos Island. Hornos Island is at the southern tip of South America, and Cape Horn is located on the island's southern most headland. Cape Horn is therefore at the extreme tip of South America. Hornos Island is remote, treeless, shrubless, but green with grass. During the summer, it is cold, constantly windy, constantly rainy, and even more so during the rest of the year. There is a lighthouse, manned by a Chilean marine. Since this is a one-year duty assignment, the marine's wife and two small children live with him in the keeper's house. There is also a one-room, wooden chapel and a memorial to all the seafarers who have died trying to navigate Drake Passage, which is just south of the Cape, between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Cape Horn was not the most fascinating expedition of the cruise, but it had its own beauty. Standing on the Cape and looking south, across Drake Passage toward Antarctica, is kind of fun when you realize that everything you know is behind you.

Pia Glacier, one of three glaciers we visited on the cruise, is located near the Darwin Mountain Range. We approached it from Agostini Fjord on Beagle Channel, named after Darwin's ship, the HMS Beagle. The glacier appears to be a solid, giant chunk of ice. As we got closer, I could feel the air get cooler and cooler until we were right next to the glacier, and then I was cold. A sizable waterfall - glacier melt - gushed from its base and into the fjord near our raft. The jagged, spiked top of the glacier jutted up about 120 feet from water level. Being this close to the ice and the waterfall made it hard to concentrate on the moment. As we bobbed around in the water next to the glacier, our guide explained the process of glaciation and the history of Pia Glacier in particular, including it's progress over the millennia. Despite the political baggage that glaciers have picked up over past few years, our guide adroitly avoided any commentary that might set off a raucous, riotous debate among

the passengers in her little raft. Just the facts.

The helmsman guided the raft away from the glacier and back toward the ship. As we made our way out of the fjord toward Beagle Channel, he slapped me on the shoulder, pointed to something behind me, and gestured at my camera. I turned to see a death struggle between a buzzard eagle and a group of black-backed gulls. The eagle had apparently attacked one of the gulls, a chick, and was in the process of killing and devouring it. Other gulls were trying to save their chick. The struggle was desperate, and the eagle would not release its prey. One of the gulls, probably the mother, retreated from the fight and, because of the stress, regurgitated the food she had been trying to feed her chick. In the end, the eagle prevailed.

After our raft left the area, other rafts arrived. Passengers and guides on those rafts reported later that the gulls were still circling, looking for their chick.

Tierra del Fuego is a wild place and like my wife, Pat, it is dangerous, beautiful, and constantly changing. There are oceans clashing, storms raging, and mountains thrusting up from subterranean depths. Ancient glaciers push and carve the terrain. There are forests, grasslands, and wild animals. Charles Darwin, who spent an awful lot of time down here in the early nineteenth century, was onto something when he postulated that all us organisms must adapt or die.

Our cruise ended in Puenta Arenas, Chile. It was nice to be reminded that there are still wild places on the planet.