Our return crossing of the infamous Drake Passage was
essentially uneventful. We left in
3-meter swells that progressively diminished to 1 meter. The captain was able to throttle up and
we made the crossing 12 hours early.
He put into Ushuaia, the southern most city in the world. We berthed beside National Geographic’s ship, “Orion”, which
is considerably smaller than ours.
This morning in Ushuaia we took an excursion through the
forest on a logging trail at the foot of the Andes. There were five 4x4s four of which had to be winched out of
one of the mud holes we encountered. We stopped at a beaver dam. Beavers have become a serious invasive species with no predators so they grow to 70 pounds. We ended up driving through an area of homesteading which is part of the government program to encourage people to live here. It is beautiful but harsh living.
We are now cruising the Beagle Channel at the very southern end of Tierra del Fuego. This is an alternate to the Straits of Magellan but much narrower. We have not seen any commercial traffic as anything that could go through here would alternatively use the Panama Canal.
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| Forest destroyed by beavers |
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| Squatter's home |
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| Homesteaders |
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