Following in the Footsteps of Darwin

I apologize for keeping you all hanging. The last few days have had their ups and downs…literally. As a sufferer of motion sickness, I come very preparedly for these occasional battles with the beast but it must be said that the beast hasn’t yet encountered some of the swells and winds off the southern tips of Chile’s Pacific coast. I won’t bore you all with the details but suffice it to say that missing a few meals is not a diet plan I would recommend when on holiday.

It wasn’t just me, though. The Husband certainly took his share of my medication and there were more than just a few “Do Not Disturb” signs on cabin doors for many hours. One of the waiters we encountered told us that the rocking and rolling was enough for him to miss his afternoon nap. The poor baby. But the weather was enough to cancel our port at Punta Arenas. The tenders couldn’t get across the water and then the authorities closed the port off to all vessels. It meant that our hike in Patagonia fell off of the proverbial cliff but it also meant that we were treated to some stunning scenery through the fjords and a few extra glaciers that would have been normally traversed by night. A rainbow in every cloud.

We finally got to put our feet on terra firma again today in the coastal town of Ushuaia on the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego. A former penal colony, Ushuaia is tucked into a cove just adjacent to the Beagle Channel; named as a tribute to the HMS Beagle that carried Charles Darwin around the tip of South America. Any place that reveres Darwin is okay in my books even if the climate hovers in the subpolar environs. So what do two people who are tired of sea life do when they finally get off a ship? Why they take a nature tour of the Beagle Channel, of course.

Cold, windy, on more water with waves, and truly magnificent. We were thrilled to see thousands of emperor cormorants (they look a bit like penguins) back for the mating season as were the rock cormorants and the black-headed Argentinian seagulls. The small rock islands in the cove a few kilometres out from Ushuaia are their homes at this time of year. The South American sea lion is also home for the mating season and we were able to get up close and personal with many of these majestic and very noisy creatures. Our final stop on our little mini cruise took us to Les Éclaireurs lighthouse. While it isn’t technically the “lighthouse at the end of the world”, it is pretty close. The one at the bottom of the island, about three-hundred kilometres south, has that distinction but this one is still pretty stunning.

I know that I have said things like this before but I am enthralled by animals and other wildlife doing what they are supposed to do in the places in which they are supposed to do it. I haven’t shopped one bit on this trip and that’s mostly because I cannot avert my eyes from the next splendour around each turn. We humans have yet to figure out how best to share this planet and the more I travel the more certain I am at how badly we have fucked it up. We cannot ever pretend again to take anything in our natural world for granted and it is up to us to find solutions to protect what is still here for us to marvel at. I am not blind to the macro solutions that are necessary to achieve by governments and industry but I am also not willing to tolerate the bullshit any longer from climate deniers in charge. I’ve seen a great deal in the past two weeks and with a week to go I hope to see more. My eyes are wide open. Are Yours?