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January 24, 2000 |
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fin del mundo |
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Position: 54-48 S Today's Bird Sightings: Today's Reading: Endurance by Alfred Lansing, The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin
Copyright © 2000, Janet I. Egan |
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I finished reading Endurance on the plane, so was ready to plunge into The Voyage of the Beagle here in Beagle country. The Beagle Channel is indeed named after H.M.S. Beagle, but not in honor of Darwin's voyage. FitzRoy, the captain of H.M.S. Beagle had named the channel after his ship on a previous voyage. Darwin describes it: This channel, which was discovered by Captain FitzRoy during the last voyage, is a most remarkable feature in the geography of this, or indeed of any other country. Its length is about 120 miles with an average breadth, not subject to any great variations, of about 2 miles. It is throughout the greater part so extremely straight that the view, bounded on either side by a line of mountains, gradually becomes indistinct in perspective. He goes on to compare it to the area of Lochness in Scotland, where I have never been so can't vouch for the comparison. Anyway, from the air the channel looks pretty much like Darwin described it. A group of passengers from the Explorer, which awaits us at the dock in Ushuaia harbor, is swaying back and forth in the airport lounge miming seasickness and pointing to the area behind the ear where the scopolamine patch goes, urging us to put it on now. They sway and sway as we stand in line to clear immigration. They find out we're birders and start miming peering through binoculars while swaying and being seasick. Anybody who's really susceptible to motion sickness could be triggered by this welcoming committee. Once the formalities are complete, we leave the weird
welcomers behind and buses whisk us to a beautiful
restaurant on the outskirts of Ushuaia for lunch.
My
The dump was definitely worth it. Three different species of caracara were chowing down on trash. We got fabulous views of the white-throated caracara as well as chimango caracara and crested caracara. Sort of a caracara trifecta. The wind picked up suddenly, a strong downdraft that blew trash around and whipped up dust devils. I made up two new species of caracara: the white trash bag and the green trash bag. Somebody else chimed in that I'd missed the "senora's bloomers caracara". I think I inhaled dump grit. I definitely got some in my mouth. I can still feel it grinding between my teeth. (I can't seem to find my toothbrush and fear I left it in Chile.) Some wind. The coriolis force up close and personal. I loved the dump. It was great fun. We stopped by a ditch on the road back to town from the dump to get a look at some crested ducks. There turned out to be lots more species lurking in the ditch. As we started to leave, one guy saw an ashy headed gooses and demanded to stop the bus. The driver went really slow, stopped and started, and acted indecisive. People were really getting tense. We finally stopped and got a good look at the goose and the tense guy calmed down. I elected to go shopping instead of a half hour more birding as did several other people. Partly I wanted off the bus, and partly I figured this was my only opportunity to meet the kids' demand for penguin souvenirs. I bought them key chains, bookmarks, and fridge magnets with penguins on them, some postcards, and a T-shirt for myself, which I could not pass up. It showed masses of penguins on the side of a hill and read: Ushuaia Antartida Everything around there is called "fin del mundo" or "world's end" - the shops, restaurants, lighthouses, everything, but it was the "comienzo de la vida" that got me. The beginning of life. The end of the world and the beginning of life. Note also how the shirt slogan, like the welcome to Ushuaia sign above, seems to assert Argentina's claim on Antarctica (despite international treaties that nobody owns it). Anyway, as I'm waiting in line to pay for all this loot I spot a coffee mug with every Antarctic species of penguin on it and the slogan "Salvelos Extincion es para Siempre". Who could pass that up?
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On
the flight to Ushuaia from Santiago, the pilot pointed out a
steaming volcano below us - a perfect cone like an
illustration from a volcanology text book. A break in the
clouds gave me my first glimpse of Tierra del Fuego - snow
mountains, the beautiful bay, the Beagle Channel -
stunning.
first overall impression of Tierra del Fuego is beech trees,
lots and lots of beech trees - and mountains of course. Some
people try to locate woodpeckers during lunch, needing to
get that one life bird even if it's from the window of the
restaurant. Nobody found whatever woodpecker they were
after, but some folks did pick up some new birds that I
didn't see.
Ushuaia
is one of the gateways to Antarctica (along with Punta
Arenas in Chile, and places in Australia, New Zealand, and
South Africa). We have a half a day in Ushuaia while they
clean and provision the ship after the previous cruise
(those swaying people in the airport). Plenty of places
offer tours to Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego and other
nearby attractions, but we've been told our best chance of
seeing a white-throated caracara is at the dump. Victor has
arranged for a bus tour to the dump, although the tour guide
on the bus seems a little surprised by this. 
Finally
we board the ship and make ready for sailing off the end of
the world. There are some imperial shags (also known as king
cormorants and several other names) in the water around the
Little Red Ship, our home for the next two weeks+. Some
Chilean skuas fly around the ship as we head out of the
beautiful harbor into the Beagle Channel looking back on a
double rainbow over Ushuaia.