We booked the Beagle and Penguin Island tour with Piratour. Their office is located in downtown Ushuaia. The cost of the tour was 2700 ARS/person (around $150 USD) +290 ARS for the Harberton Ranch (which was a requirement as the Penguin Island was privately owned by them). The boat tour was to start at 9am and we were to report at the pier by 8.30. So we had booked a Remis Taxi (private taxi company which tends to be a bit cheaper than the regular taxis – 70 Pesos). He arrived on time at 8am and we got to the pier, registered for our tour and boarded the boat. We had to pay a Port Tax of 20 pesos each in cash at the Port Authority.
There were English and Spanish-speaking guides on board and around 30-40 tourists. The Beagle Channel is a strait in the Tierra del Fuego separating the main island from various other small islands. The Channels’ eastern area forms part of the border between Chile and Argentina and the western area is entirely in Chile.
The first stop on this tour was at Isla de los Pajaros (Bird Island) where you get to see hundreds of King Cormorant birds. The boat stopped about 50 feet away from the island for around 10 minutes for us to take pictures then headed towards the next destination.
We then came to Isla de Los Lobos (Sea Lions Island). Here we got to see numerous seals and Sea Lions. The Sea Lions in particular were huge and almost looked like lions.
Next came the Les Eclaireurs Lighthouse which is a popular tourist attraction as it is known to the Argentines as the Lighthouse at the End of the World. The boat circled around this island giving everyone enough time to take pictures.
We then headed to the Harberton Ranch which was actually our first stop where we got off the boat. The entire group aboard the boat was split into 2 and one group stayed at the ranch to explore and have lunch while the other group went to Penguin Island. This was to keep the number of people visiting the island small. We were among the first group, so we stayed behind at the ranch. The ranch was originally founded in 1886 by a missionary named Thomas Bridges who named it after the village his wife grew up in. The ranch is still owned by the descendants of the missionary to this day. This was a working sheep ranch until mid 1990s, when a series of poaching and harsh winters wiped out almost all of the livestock. This prompted their move into tourism and the family now runs the restaurant at the ranch and the entrance fee collected for the Penguin Island visit.
‘Piratour’ is the only tour company having a license to operate on the Island. Visitors could either dine at the restaurant or if they have packed their own lunch, they were welcome to eat outside where they had some wooden benches laid out. Being told that the prices at the restaurant were on the pricier side, we had packed our lunch. So we ate outside and went into the restaurant to have some coffee. The soup some other patrons were having looked very appetizing, so we decided to have soup and coffee. By the time we were done, the first tour returned back and we headed towards the docks for our turn. This was a much smaller motor boat and could accommodate around 10-15 people.
The ride to Penguin Island took about 10 minutes. As I mentioned earlier, ‘Piratour’ is the only tour operator licensed to set foot on this island. So if one is looking to get a closer look at the penguins and their habitation, you have no other choice but to go with ‘Piratour’. As we got on the island, we noticed a group of penguins gathered at a short distance. Our tour guide first led us to the location where they had set up a fence or a walking path. This is because it is the breeding season for the migratory Magellanic Penguins that were most commonly found here. As our guide explained to us, these penguins lay just 2 eggs a year, the male builds the burrows or nests underground where the female will lay the eggs and they both take turns incubating them for a period of 40 days. And once the eggs hatch and summer sets in, they migrate north and return back next spring to the exact same nest. The Harberton family, who owns the island, have tagged and recorded their population and they have around 800 of these Magellan penguins. The fence was laid in such a way as to not disturb the nests. As we walked around the island, we saw hundreds of nests or holes in the ground and all of them had a penguin in the process of incubation.
We took several pictures of these wonderful creatures and then headed toward the first group of penguins we spotted as we came on the island. These, as our guide explained, are called the Gentoo Penguins and they lay their nests above ground using sticks and stones. The eggs of these penguins are prone to predatory birds that steal the eggs and hence their population is near extinction. There were just about 80 of these left on this island. Among these Gentoo Penguins, we also spotted 2 King Penguins which we were told was a rare sight.
As we were watching these, our guide pointed in the direction of the water where there was a disturbance. A leopard seal had just caught a penguin and was in the process of killing and consuming it. We slowly made our way towards the water and as we watched an occasional head or tail would pop out of the water indicating the struggle between the predator and prey. By then it was almost time for us to head back and as we boarded the boat the guide informed us that he would try to take the boat closer to where the seal was so that we could have a better look. We all armed our cameras ready to shoot. As we approached the location, he killed the engine and we were drifting for a few minutes waiting for the leopard seal to show. He did pop out of the water a few times and we were able to capture this on film. This was yet another unexpected sight that when visiting animals’ natural habitat, are chanced sightings that we were lucky to have witnessed.
We then headed back to the Harberton ranch where we got off this boat and were taken to the museum. The Museo Acatushún de Aves y Mamíferos Marinos Australes is within the homestead some 500 m from the main house. It is a working museum/laboratory for the study of the basic biology of the marine mammals (mainly dolphins) and birds of the southern tip of South America. The result of over 34 years of scientific research by its founder, Natalie Goodall, the wife of Harberton’s manager, is a collection containing the skeletons of over 2700 marine mammals and 2300 birds. University-level biology or vet student interns spend at least a month each at the museum, collecting and studying animals stranded on the beaches, doing necropsies, obtaining samples, cleaning skeletons for the collection and explaining their work to visitors. The exhibition hall has a simulated under-water scene with life-sized figures of dolphins, seals and birds, along with their skeletons. The tour also includes the laboratories where skeletons are cleaned. We were given a tour of the museum by one of the students along with a brief explanation of all the different animal bones collected only in these parts which was quite fascinating.
The ride back to Ushuaia was by land on a bus which took us around 90 minutes. We returned home by 5.30pm after a full day’s excursion. If you are in Ushuaia, a Beagle channel tour is a must and I would definitely recommend you to go with Piratour just for the chance to walk among these beautiful and rare (almost extinct) penguins.
