Every other Beagle Channel trip takes you out and brings you back the same way. This one doesn’t. You sail east to the penguin colony, the boat runs up onto a gravel beach on the far shore and leaves you there, and a minibus brings you home along the coast road — with lunch, the southernmost farm in the world and a drowned forest in between.
Nine hours, one direction, and the coast seen twice from two different places.
The day starts at the pier in the centre of Ushuaia at 08:20, and the first half is the Beagle Channel done properly, without hurrying: the sea lion colony, the rookeries of imperial and rock cormorants, and the Les Éclaireurs lighthouse on its bare islet.
A note on that lighthouse, because almost every page in English gets it wrong: it is not the “Lighthouse at the End of the World” from Jules Verne. That one is San Juan de Salvamento, on Isla de los Estados. Les Éclaireurs went into service in 1920 and stands on the reef where the liner SS Monte Cervantes sank in 1930.
Then the boat keeps going east, past where the short cruises turn around, with Chile off the starboard side the whole way.
Isla Martillo is a low spit of gravel about fifty-nine kilometres east of Ushuaia — worth stating, because plenty of English-language pages say fifteen, which is the distance from Estancia Harberton, not from town. Estancia Harberton owns the island and puts the colony at more than ten thousand Magellanic penguins.
Among them breed around a hundred Gentoo penguins, and this is the only place they breed on the South American mainland. King penguins turn up occasionally in small groups but do not nest here, so treat one as a lucky day rather than something we promised you.
You watch from the boat. There is no landing on Isla Martillo on this excursion, or on any excursion that leaves from Ushuaia — the island is private and the walking tour is licensed to a single company that departs from Harberton, ninety kilometres away by gravel road. We say so here rather than let you find out at the rail.
This is the part that makes the day worth nine hours. Past the penguin island the catamaran turns for the northern shore, runs its bow up onto the gravel near Puerto Almanza and drops the gangway. You walk off onto the beach. A minibus is waiting on the road above.
Puerto Almanza is a working fishing village of a few dozen people, the southernmost on the Argentine side of the channel, built around king crab and the boats that go out for it. It is not a set: it is a place where people live and work, forty kilometres from anywhere.
From here the day is on land: lunch, a farm, and the road home. And because you came by sea and leave by road, you end up seeing the same stretch of coast twice from two completely different places — which no other excursion out of Ushuaia does.
The whole excursion in one photograph: the beach where the boat leaves you, and the road above it where the minibus is waiting.
08:20
You present yourself at the ticket offices at the Port of Ushuaia, in the centre of town. Transfers from your hotel are not included — the pier is walkable from most of the centre.
First 2 hours
The sea lion colony, the imperial and rock cormorant rookeries, and the Les Éclaireurs lighthouse, circled so both rails get the photograph.
The penguin colony
The boat holds off the beach so you can watch the colony without disturbing it: Magellanic penguins in the thousands and the small group of Gentoos. Watched from the boat — there is no landing here.
Around midday
The catamaran runs onto the gravel and you walk off. The minibus is waiting on the road. From here the rest of the day is on land.
With drinks, included
A sit-down lunch at a restaurant built into the forest above the shore, with a menu of local produce and a glass of house wine or a soft drink. Starter, main and dessert — the full menu is further down this page.
Mid-afternoon
A working smallholding at 54° south: polytunnels of strawberries and raspberries, a shop of preserves and infusions, a tea room, and paths out to the valley the beavers flooded.
Ruta J and Ruta 3
The return leg runs west along the provincial Route J and then joins National Route 3 back into Ushuaia, with the channel on your left and the mountains ahead.
Around 17:30
Drop-off at the car park beside the Port of Ushuaia, where the day started nine hours earlier.
Read the right-hand column. The second line is the one people get wrong.
No. The penguins are watched from the boat, which holds off the beach so the colony carries on as normal.
The reason is not what most pages say. It is not a government ban: Isla Martillo is private property, owned by Estancia Harberton, and the estancia has licensed the landing to one single company that departs from Harberton — ninety kilometres east of Ushuaia by gravel road. Harberton states this on its own website.
But you do go ashore on this trip, on the far side of the channel. That is the whole second half of the day.
The first half is the same water. Then they part company.
The six-hour trip turns around at the penguin colony and sails back to Ushuaia the way it came. This one keeps going to the far shore, puts you on land, feeds you, and brings you home by road.
Put simply: the short one is a boat trip; this is a day out. If you have a spare full day in Ushuaia and you would rather see one thing properly than three things in a hurry, this is the one.
A proper sit-down meal, not a packed sandwich. Local produce, with a glass of house wine or a soft drink included.
To start: mussels in provençal butter, or vegetable soup.
Main course: catch of the day with rustic potatoes; or pork bondiola in a reduction of beer, mustard and honey; or home-made ribbon pasta with a sauce of your choice; or sorrentinos filled with roast squash, onion and toasted almonds.
Dessert: a Zingarella with toffee cream, or peaches in syrup.
The menu is confirmed at the time of travel and can change with what the boats bring in, which is rather the point of eating in a fishing village.
Yes, and it is arranged in advance rather than improvised on the day. Tell us when you enquire.
For coeliacs specifically, the gluten-free option is brought in from a kitchen that works only with gluten-free food, precisely to avoid cross-contamination. It is a set option rather than a choice from the menu, and what is available depends on the day — but it is taken seriously.
Vegetarian, vegan and other restrictions: tell us the details and we will confirm before you book, not after.
A working smallholding on the shore of the Beagle Channel, at roughly 54° south, growing strawberries and raspberries under plastic in a place where the growing season is about four months long and the wind does its best to stop you.
You walk the tunnels, see the shop where the preserves and infusions are made and sold, and stop in the tea room. It is small and unglamorous and rather moving: agriculture practised at the edge of where agriculture works at all.
Beavers. In 1946 twenty-five pairs of North American beavers were released in Tierra del Fuego to start a fur trade. The fur trade never happened. The beavers did.
With no predators and no competition they spread across the whole island. Their dams flood the valleys, and the Fuegian forest — unlike the North American one they came from — does not regrow after being drowned. So the valleys stay as they are: rings of standing dead trunks in still water, for kilometres. You pass several on the way home.
It is one of the most striking landscapes in Tierra del Fuego and one of the clearest cautionary tales about introduced species anywhere in the world.
Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, from November to March. Departure is at 08:20 and you are back at the port around 17:30.
Because it runs three days a week rather than daily, it is the excursion most worth fitting your Ushuaia days around. Send us your dates and we will tell you which day it falls on.
Departures can be suspended in strong wind — the port authority decides, not the operator. If yours is suspended you are rescheduled or refunded.
Practical advice, and it matters more for this one than for the short trips: because it only runs three days a week, leave yourself room. Do not put it on the last day before your flight, or a cancellation means you lose it entirely rather than move it.
Yes, with one caveat: it is nine hours. The boat has a heated saloon, a bar and toilets; the minibus is a normal coach; the lunch is sitting down; and the walking at the farm is flat and optional.
The caveat is stamina rather than difficulty. For a very small child, nine hours is a long day. If your group would rather have the penguins without the full day, the six-hour navigation does that.
A windproof jacket, whatever the forecast says, plus a hat and gloves even in January. You are on the water for the first half and the good viewing is on the open deck.
Also closed shoes with grip for the gravel beach and the farm paths, sunglasses and sunscreen, and a spare camera battery. And cash, if you want to bring home a jar of something from the farm shop.
Most people arrive in Ushuaia with three days and a list, and spend them collecting things: a boat, a train, a sign, a plate of king crab. It works, and everybody does it, and it leaves you with a set of photographs and no particular sense of where you have been.
This day is the opposite of that. Nine hours, one direction, and you come back a different way. You see the channel from the water in the morning and the same coast from the road in the afternoon. You eat in a village where the fishing boats are working while you eat. You stand in a polytunnel of strawberries at the latitude where trees give up. And on the way home you pass valleys full of standing dead forest, drowned by animals somebody released here eighty years ago for a business that never opened.
It runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays only, which means it is the one excursion worth building the rest of your Ushuaia days around rather than fitting in. Send us your dates and how many of you there are and we will tell you which day it lands on and what to do with the others.
Free quotation within 24 hours, with no obligation. Tell us your dates and how many of you are travelling and we will confirm which day it runs, what is included, and how it fits with the rest of your time in Ushuaia. Tell us about any dietary restrictions and we will arrange them in advance.
The same penguins without the land half: out to Isla Martillo and back by sea in six hours.
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Half a day: sea lions, the lighthouse and a landing on Bridges Island. No penguins on that one.
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The other half day everyone does: the prison railway of 1909 and the end of Route 3.
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