Our Great Adventure: Beagle Channel Day 221 27/04/2015

We woke up to a near perfect day of clear blue skies, no wind and a crisp chill that we hadn't experienced since being near Cradle Mountain in Tasmania, what seems such a long time ago (only 3 months in fact!). We had a prompt start with the intention of trying to get on a boat tour that morning. Our luck was in and just after 0930 we headed out on a quarter full catamaran into the Beagle Channel. As we moved towards the first point of interest, the Isla de Bridges, in the centre of the channel, the full majesty of the vista emerged. On all sides were snow capped mountains; to the north encircling Ushuaia, to the east into Chile and over the other side of the strait towards Isla Navarino, which is also part of Chile. Eastwards we could see the mouth of the channel in the distance into the Atlantic with the next stop being the Antarctic. The sea was quite calm and the views, in the crisp, clear sunlight was breath taking. At the Isla de Bridges we got off the boat in a sheltered cove and walked slightly up to its promontory to be able to soak in the wonderful 360 degree views. Back on board we went close to a sea lion colony (thankfully upwind) and spent 15 minutes floating there watching these huge creatures. Next stop was a seal colony and whilst we've been lucky to see so many seals on out trip, we've never been quite this close and we also enjoyed watching them hunting for fish in the water and generally 'mucking about'. We then sailed further out into the channel to go around the second most southerly lighthouse in the world (the most southern one is near Cape Horn). Built in the early 20th century, Les Eclaireurs has saved countless shipwrecks although not before there was a major one when 3000 people had to abandon ship, with remarkably only one loss of life (the captain). We sailed back to harbour drinking in the scenes around us, docking back in Ushuaia 3 hours later. The perfect nature of the trip made up slightly for the disappointing weather on the Navimag ferry which had prevented us getting any views. Whilst it did mean we had to forgo going on the train at the end of the world due to lack of time, it was well worth it. Over lunch we reviewed the photos of the boat trip, having to make some tough decisions of which to keep and which to delete so we could get it down to a manageable number; we still think we've got more than 3 times too many but like all the pictures we've taken we can edit them when we get home (as a welcome break to job hunting!). We got back to the b&b mid afternoon and spent the rest of the day planning what route we would taken after we get to Buenos Aires, through Uruguay and then back into northern Argentina over the next month. Dinner that evening was a simple affair at the local Italian and being good on the wine front too (keep having to tell ourselves we are not on holiday!!).