Ushuaia, Antarctica · Polar

5 ideal things to do in Ushuaia

The short list, pulled out of the long essay. No opening hours, because they change and I would only get them wrong — just what is worth your morning, roughly when to turn up, and where I have wasted time so you don’t have to.

By Ščenza

Last checked December 30, 2025

1. 01

   Senda Costera, Tierra del Fuego National Park

   West of Ushuaia, at the end of Ruta 3·The day before you board

   Lenga forest on one side, the Beagle Channel on the other, and at the end of it Bahía Lapataia, where Ruta 3 — the road that begins in Buenos Aires — simply stops in a car park by the water. I walked it in horizontal drizzle with the wrong jacket, having assumed that December at this latitude meant summer in the way Dalmatia means summer. It does not. Do it before you board: it is the last time for ten days you will walk anywhere that has trees.

2. 02

   Museo Marítimo y del Presidio de Ushuaia

   Yaganes, central Ushuaia·A wet afternoon before embarkation

   Ushuaia exists because Argentina put a penal colony at the bottom of the world — first prisoners in 1884, the big prison built from 1902 by the inmates themselves, who then built the town around it. The museum is the prison. You walk the actual cell wings, one left unheated and unrestored, which is the honest one. Four collections share the building, including an Antarctic wing full of expedition relics. I went in for forty minutes, came out two hours later, and stopped complaining about my cabin.

3. 03

   Penguin walk on Isla Martillo, via Estancia Harberton

   Beagle Channel, east of Ushuaia by road then dinghy·September to April only; Harberton shuts on Tuesdays

   Most Beagle Channel boats circle the island and let you photograph the colony from fifty metres. One operator is licensed to land, capped at a few dozen people a day, and you walk a marked line through Magellanic penguins with gentoos mixed in. The birds have no interest in you whatsoever, and that is the correct arrangement. Pair it with the morning navigation past Les Éclaireurs lighthouse and the sea-lion rock. Harberton closes on Tuesdays, a fact I established by arriving on one.

4. 04

   Crossing the Drake Passage on deck

   Open water between Cape Horn and the South Shetlands·Two days out, two days back; November to March

   Everyone books the seasickness patch and then spends two days finding out whether theirs works. Mine mostly did. What nobody mentions beforehand is that the bridge on an expedition ship is usually open, and a wandering albatross will hold station off the stern for an hour without once flapping — the most efficient thing I have ever watched happen. Standing out in that wind is genuinely unpleasant and I went out every day. After the Drake, our bura back home felt like a rumour.

5. 05

   First continental landing at Neko Harbour

   Andvord Bay, Antarctic Peninsula·Zodiac operations, weather permitting — always weather permitting

   Landings on the peninsula are mostly on islands, so Neko Harbour matters: it is one of the places where you stand on the continent itself, which counts for more than it logically should among people who have flown a very long way. Gentoos nest up the slope, deliberately high, because the glacier across the bay calves without warning and the wave comes in fast. Boot wash on the way out, boot wash on the way back, nothing eaten ashore, nothing picked up. The smell downwind outlasts the photographs.