Les Éclaireurs Lighthouse: “The Lighthouse at the End of the World”

There are three ways to get from the Atlantic to the Pacific at the southern tip of South America. You can take the Straits of Magellan; you can take the Beagle Channel (named after the ship that Charles Darwin took in 1831-36); and all the way around Cape Horn.

When I was in Ushuaia in 2006 and 2011, I took cruises on the Beagle Channel to Estancia Harberton to see the Magellanic penguins on Isla Pájaros. On the first trip, the weather changed abruptly so that we had to return to Ushuaia by bus rather than on shipboard. The second time, the weather was perfect; and Martine and I were actually able to land on the island and walk among the penguins.

Martine on Isla Pájaros with Penguins

Now Magellanic penguins are much smaller than Emperor or King Penguins, but they are penguins nonetheless. I suppose we could have dished out $10,000+ plus each to take a Russian icebreaker across the stormy Drake Passage to Antarctica to see the Emperor penguins, but we were (and still are) short of cash.

Seeing the penguins was nice, but Estancia Harberton was interesting in its own right. It was founded by the English missionary family that settled that part of Tierra del Fuego. The son, Lucas Bridges, is the author of perhaps the greatest book on the are: The Uttermost Part of the Earth.

I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in Argentina and Tierra del Fuego.