We had 6 days in Ushuaia, and it was too expensive to take more than one Beagle Channel Cruise, so we explored some of the area on foot.
First, we did a little hiking at the national park, where the famous Pan American Highway ends.
From here, we could hike all the way to Alaska – only 17,848 kilometers – but instead we just walked around the park a little bit. Pretty amazing scenery – we barely scratched the surface.
On a rainy day, we explored Ushuaia’s Presidio Museum complex, quite a hike in itself. This vast and comprehensive museum is housed in the former prison that held most of Ushuaia’s early inhabitants (the town was originally a penal colony).
Most of the cells have been turned into museum exhibits of not only the prison’s history, but also that of the entire island and it’s wildlife, culture and art.
But there’s one wing that hasn’t been remodeled, where we got a sense of what a fun place this must have been decades ago.
Our most interesting and challenging hike was to the Martial Glacier, overlooking the city from the North.
There’s a neat little chairlift that got us halfway there with relative ease.
But then we had to hike the rest of the way up the 1,000 meter mountain, following a trail along the stream fed by the melting glacier.
It’s a nice walk, but it gets progressively steeper. Once we got past the treeline, the girls were getting tired. We made a few rest stops to enjoy the views.
When the girls couldn’t go any further, i went on alone – I guess I had “summit fever”. It was much farther than I thought, and the terrain became more and more desolate and rugged.
It was easy to see that this glacier had once covered the hillside – now all that was left was a wash of gravel.
The views all the way down to the city were pretty amazing, though.
I never made it all the way to the glacier, but I made it to where the snow starts.
After more than an hour, i finally made it back to the girls, who hadn’t quite given me up for dead. Just like on Taquile Island in Peru, the way down was much harder, especially on the knees.
After the chairlift ride back to the base, we took a taxi back to town and went to bed early – enough hiking for now!
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The chairlift looks like fun but I’m sure cold from the looks of it there.