Yesterday evening around 7.30pm we arrived at Cape Horn, the most southerly island and point of South America, the sky was lovely and clear and the captain drove around the island and sounded the horn when we were at the very tip. We went out onto the deck and got some photos and as you will see from them it was very windy! We then sat in the Crows Nest (bat at front top) and played poker as we made our way into the Beagle Channel (a 3 mile wide channel that joins the Atlantic and Pacific oceans with mountains and glaciers on either side).
This morning we finally got off the ship after 4 days at sea :). We had booked a trip so met our tour guide at 8am and got on a minibus that took us about 25 minutes down the road to a forest of Ushuaia. Ushuaia is the southern most populated town in the world so we were quite excited about stopping there. We were dropped off at the side of the road with our guide Daniella, only the 4 of us had booked the trip so we got a private trek which was great. We then walked a few minutes into the forest where we found a cabin that looked out onto the most beautiful view of the mountains and forest.
We changed into some wellies then started the 5km hike into the forest. When we booked the trip we weren’t aware that Ushuaia is overpopulated with Beavers, 25 couples were brought to the town about 50 years ago and now there are around 200,000 so they find it extremely difficult to control the population. Although we didn’t see any beavers as they are nocturnal, we did see several dams that they had built and quite a few beaver houses and channels. We also learned quite a lot about them and how they spend their whole lives building and repairing their dams, they are very busy little creatures!
We hiked for just over 2 hours; saw a beautiful waterfall and got a very good workout! We then went back to the cabin for some sandwiches and cake, then got dropped into the town around 12.30pm. We looked for an Argentian sim card with 3G so we could have some internet for the afternoon but after waiting in an unmoving queue for about 20 minutes we gave up and went back to the ship. The ship left Ushuaia at 2.30pm and we went back to the room for a nap that turned into a 4 hour hibernation.
At 6pm we had dinner at the Pinnacle Grill, we had the most amazing view of the glaciers and mountains through the Beagle Channel. We stuffed ourselves silly and had to go to bed early!!
