Four days in Ushuaia: built as a prison because nobody could escape from it

Three nights at the bottom of Argentina, with the old convict jail, the train the prisoners built, a day on the Beagle Channel and a glacier above the town.

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Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Ushuaia
Places
8 across 4 days
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Argentina had a problem in 1900: a vast southern territory it claimed and almost nobody willing to live in it. The answer was a prison. Ship the worst of the country's convicts to the far end of Tierra del Fuego, let them build their own jail, their own railway and their own town, and rely on the mountains, the channel and the weather to make escape pointless. It worked. The jail closed in 1947 and the town it left behind is still here.

Ushuaia now sits between a mountain wall and the Beagle Channel with about eighty thousand people, a container port, a duty free zone and the departure quay for most of the ships going to Antarctica. Nobody would call it pretty. It is a working southern port that has learned exactly how to sell the phrase end of the world, and behind the souvenir shops is some of the most extraordinary country in South America.

Three nights is the right stay: one day in town, one in the national park, one on the water, and a morning up the glacier. Everything below happens within thirty kilometres of the main street.

Highlights

  • The old prison, now a museum, where you can walk a wing left exactly as it was
  • The narrow gauge train the convicts built, running into Tierra del Fuego National Park
  • A day on the Beagle Channel among sea lions, cormorants and the lighthouse everyone calls the last one
  • Bahia Lapataia, where the road from Buenos Aires runs out at a sign and a bay
  • King crab pulled out of the channel that morning, which is the one thing to eat here

Where to stay

Ushuaia

The town runs along a strip of shore under the Martial range, and the streets going up from the water are steep enough to be hard work with a bag. The channel in front is the Beagle, the mountains on the far side are Chilean, and the last of the Andes end here by falling into the sea.

Three nights split cleanly: the museums and the prison on the day you arrive, the national park west of town, a day on the water, and the glacier above the town on the last morning before an afternoon flight.

Day by day

Day 1 in Ushuaia

The prison, the museums and the first plate of crab

The prison is the reason there is a town at all, and the museum inside it is far better than a small southern town has any right to have. Four collections share the building: the maritime history of the channel, the Antarctic expeditions, an art gallery in one converted wing, and the prison itself, with one whole wing left unrestored so you can walk the corridor between the cold cells and read what the men in them had done.

The Museo del Fin del Mundo, a few blocks along the waterfront, is the other half of the story: the Yamana and Selknam peoples who lived on these channels for six thousand years and were effectively wiped out within fifty years of European settlement, plus the shipwrecks, the missionaries and a large collection of Fuegian birds.

Then eat. The centolla comes out of the channel, and the first evening is the right time to spend money on it.

  1. 14:30

    Museo Marítimo

    Visit

    The convict jail, opened at the start of the twentieth century and closed in 1947, now four museums in one building. Leave the restored wings for last and start in the one they left cold and peeling, which is the part you will remember.

  2. 17:00

    Museo del Fin del Mundo

    Culture

    The town museum, split across two buildings a few blocks apart on the waterfront, covering the indigenous peoples of the channels, the sealers and missionaries who followed, and the largest display of Tierra del Fuego birds anywhere. One ticket covers both.

  3. 20:30

    King crab, first night

    Eat

    Centolla is the thing to order and every restaurant on and above San Martin has it. Steamed with lemon is the honest version; the gratin buries it in cream. Book at the weekend in January.

With more time: Plaza Malvinas on the waterfront is a five minute walk and worth reading properly: the monument names the men lost with the cruiser Belgrano in 1982 and it is tended. The Casa de Gobierno up the hill is a peculiar mix of alpine chalet and 1950s functionalism and takes thirty seconds to look at, which is the correct amount.

Day 2 in Ushuaia

Tierra del Fuego National Park, and the end of the road

The park starts twelve kilometres west of town and runs to the Chilean border: beech forest, peat bog, beaver dams and a coastline of small bays with the channel beyond. It is not high mountain country. It is low, wet, quiet and completely unlike anything further north in Argentina.

Start with the train, which is a tourist ride and also a piece of the history. The narrow gauge line was laid by the prisoners to haul timber back to the jail, and the rebuilt version runs forty five minutes along the same roadbed into the park with an audio guide explaining what the men were doing there.

Once inside, the walking is easy and the best of it is on the coast. The Senda Costera follows the shore for about eight kilometres between two bays and takes half a day at a gentle pace. Ruta 3, the road that starts in Buenos Aires, ends at Bahia Lapataia with a sign giving the distance back, which is a slightly silly thing to photograph and everyone does it.

There is a hut near the entrance that sells a passport stamp saying you reached the end of the world. It is not official and it is the best three minutes in the park.

  1. 09:30

    Tren del Fin del Mundo

    Historic

    A narrow gauge line rebuilt on the roadbed the convicts laid to carry firewood, running forty five minutes from a station outside town into the park. Buy the park entry separately, sit on the right going in, and take the audio guide.

  2. 13:00

    Packed lunch by the water

    Eat

    There is one small cafe near the entrance and nothing else, so buy food in town before you leave. Eat it at Bahia Ensenada or Lapataia, watching for steamer ducks and the beaver dams the park is still trying to get rid of.

  3. 14:30

    Mastil de General Belgrano

    Visit

    A memorial out towards Isla Redonda to General Belgrano and to the cruiser that carried his name, in a quiet corner of the park with the channel in front of it. A short detour off the main road and a very different tone from the rest of the day.

With more time: The full Senda Costera walk between Ensenada and Lapataia takes three to four hours and is the best thing in the park; if you want it, take the first minibus in rather than the train and give the whole day to walking. Laguna Esmeralda, outside the park on the road north, is the other classic day walk from Ushuaia: four hours return through peat bog to a green lake under a glacier, and you will finish it covered in mud.

Day 3 in Ushuaia

A day on the Beagle Channel

The channel was surveyed by HMS Beagle in the 1830s, with Darwin aboard on the second voyage, and it is still the best way to understand where you are: a deep waterway between two mountain walls, with the Argentine side to the north and Chile a few kilometres south.

Boats leave the tourist pier through the day. The standard sailing is about four hours and takes in the sea lion colony on Isla de los Lobos, an island of cormorants that sounds and smells exactly as you would expect, and Les Eclaireurs, a squat red and white lighthouse on a rock that everybody calls the lighthouse at the end of the world. It is not the one Jules Verne wrote about, which stood further east, and nobody here is in a hurry to correct you.

The longer sailings add a landing on Isla Bridges or, in season, a run east to the penguin colony at Martillo, where Magellanic and gentoo penguins nest and a handful of king penguins turn up. Check whether your boat lands or only circles, because the difference matters and the price hides it.

Take the afternoon slowly afterwards. Plaza Malvinas and the waterfront are ten minutes from the pier.

  1. 09:30

    Beagle Channel

    Visit

    Four hours out from the tourist pier, past sea lions hauled out on the rocks and an island of cormorants, with the Chilean mountains on the far shore. Catamarans are faster and warmer, small sailing boats are colder and much better. Dress for wind, not for the forecast.

  2. 11:30

    Les Eclaireurs Lighthouse

    Architecture

    The red and white tower on a bare rock in the middle of the channel, the picture everyone takes home from Ushuaia. Boats circle it rather than land. The name it is sold under belongs to a different lighthouse hundreds of kilometres east, which does not seem to bother anyone.

  3. 15:00

    Plaza Malvinas

    Visit

    The memorial on the waterfront to the 1982 conflict over the Malvinas, as the islands are known here, with the names of the dead from this province. Quiet, well kept, and read rather than photographed.

With more time: If the weather cancels the boat, which happens, the fallback is the Museo del Fin del Mundo's second building or the drive out to Lago Escondido and Lago Fagnano over the Garibaldi pass, which is spectacular in any weather. In winter, Cerro Castor is forty minutes east and has the longest ski season in South America.

Day 4 in Ushuaia

Up to the Martial glacier, and the flight north

The Martial glacier hangs in a cirque directly above the town, seven kilometres up a road of switchbacks and then a path through beech forest to the moraine. What is left of the ice is small and shrinking, and that is not really the reason to go up: the reason is the view straight down over the roofs to the channel and across to Chile.

It is about an hour and a half up on foot from the end of the road and less coming down. Go early, take the wind seriously, and turn back at the treeline in bad weather because there is nothing above it worth being caught in.

The airport is a few minutes from the centre and flights north leave through the day, so a morning on the mountain and an afternoon departure fit together comfortably.

  1. 08:30

    Hike the Glaciar Martial

    Visit

    A walk up through southern beech to the moraine below what remains of the glacier, with the best view of Ushuaia and the Beagle Channel on the way. Around ninety minutes up. Boots, a windproof layer and water; there is a cafe at the bottom and nothing above it.

  2. 13:00

    Last lunch on San Martin

    Eat

    Back in town by one. A crab empanada and a beer from one of the small local breweries is the correct way to finish, and it costs a tenth of the first night's dinner.

With more time: If the mountain is closed in, the alternative morning is the drive east along the channel to Playa Larga and the peat bogs, or an hour in the duty free shops, which is what everybody actually ends up doing. Left luggage is available at most hotels and at the bus terminal.

Before you go

Getting in and getting around

Ushuaia's airport is four kilometres from the centre, close enough to see the runway from town, with several flights a day from Buenos Aires and connections to El Calafate. The approach down the channel is one of the great landings anywhere, so take a window seat on the left flying south.

The alternative is the long way: buses from Rio Gallegos or Punta Arenas, which involve crossing into Chile, a ferry over the Strait of Magellan and a full day of your life. It is cheap and it is genuinely interesting country, but do not do it because you think it will save time.

In town everything is on or just above Avenida San Martin, which is six blocks of shops, agencies and restaurants. Everything outside town is a taxi, a shuttle or a booked excursion; there is a regular minibus service to the national park and to the trailheads in high season.

Weather, and what to bring

Summer, from December to February, means highs of around ten to fourteen degrees, seventeen hours of daylight and wind that turns a mild day cold in minutes. Winter is dark, snowy and colder but not as brutal as the latitude suggests, because the sea moderates it.

Layers, a genuinely waterproof and windproof outer shell, a hat and boots with grip. All four seasons in one afternoon is the standing joke here and it is not a joke. Any hike, including the easy ones, needs proper footwear because the ground is peat bog and it holds water all summer.

The sun is stronger than it feels, with the ozone layer thin at this latitude in spring. Sunscreen even on a grey day.

Eating and prices

Centolla, the southern king crab, is the local speciality and it is caught in the channel. It appears steamed with lemon, in a gratin, in ravioli and in empanadas, and it is expensive everywhere and worth it once. Patagonian lamb, cooked slowly over an open fire, is the other regional dish.

Ushuaia is one of the more expensive places in Argentina, because everything arrives by boat or plane and the town has a captive market of cruise passengers. The parrillas a street or two above San Martin cost noticeably less than the ones on it.

The town is also a duty free zone, which mostly means electronics and whisky, and mostly means nothing to a visitor.

Antarctica, and other things to book

Around nine in ten Antarctic cruises leave from this port, usually between November and March, and they take ten days to three weeks. Last-minute berths do sometimes come up in the agencies on San Martin at a discount, but planning a trip around that possibility is a gamble.

For a normal visit the things to book ahead are the Beagle Channel sailing, the train, and any hike with a guide. In January and February the good boats fill a few days out.

The name on the monument

Ushuaia is the capital of the Argentine province that formally includes the islands Argentina calls the Malvinas and Britain calls the Falklands, and the 1982 war is present here in a way it is not elsewhere in the country: a monument in the centre, street names, memorials to the cruiser sunk that May with the loss of three hundred and twenty three men.

It is a live subject and visitors are not expected to have a view. Read the monument, take it seriously, and do not open the argument.

What makes Ushuaia worth four days rather than the overnight stop most people give it is the gap between the two versions of the place. One is a souvenir slogan printed on everything in the shop windows. The other is a convict colony, a wiped-out people, a war memorial and a national park where the road from Buenos Aires simply stops at a bay.

Fly north to El Calafate for the glaciers, or west across the strait to Punta Arenas if you are working your way up the Chilean side.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is Ushuaia really the southernmost city in the world?
It is the southernmost city, and Puerto Williams across the channel in Chile is further south and has recently been reclassified as one too. The argument is about definitions and it is taken seriously on both sides. Whichever you believe, this is as far south as most people will get without boarding a ship.
How does Ushuaia fit with El Calafate?
They are the two southern flying hubs and there are direct flights between them, about an hour and a quarter. Doing both is the standard Patagonian trip: three nights here, three or four there, with the glacier at Perito Moreno and the mountains at El Chalten on that side. Overland between them is two days and a border crossing.
Is it worth coming in winter?
Yes, if you ski or want snow at sea level. Cerro Castor is forty minutes from town and has the longest season on the continent, running roughly June to October, and the town is much cheaper. The national park is beautiful under snow and half the boat trips do not run.
How much does the weather actually ruin?
Boats are cancelled for wind fairly often and the high walks are unreliable, so leave a spare day if either matters to you. The museums, the train and the lower parts of the park are fine in almost anything. Nobody here waits for good weather, because they would wait a long time.
Can I change this plan?
Yes. Copy it, swap the train for a full day walking the coast path, add the penguin colony, drop the glacier if the forecast is bad.