The Wilderness Beyond: Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego & the Chilean Fjords (2012)

Fly overnight from the U.S. today.

You’ll touch down in the Argentinean capital this morning, where your OAT Trip Leader or an OAT representative will meet you and assist with the transfer to your hotel.

In the afternoon, take part in a guided orientation walk, giving you the lay of the land in your Buenos Aires neighborhood. Later this afternoon, you’ll meet your travel companions and Trip Leader for a Welcome Briefing, during which you’ll learn some more details of what’s to come in South America. Then enjoy a short tango lesson that introduces us to the dance whose passion and grace exemplify the spirit of Argentinean culture.

Afterwards we’ll enjoy a Welcome Dinner at a local restaurant.

After breakfast, we set off on a tour of Buenos Aires, an elegant mixture of Spanish colonial architecture and several traditional European styles.

We’ll visit Avenida de Mayo, which runs into Plaza de Mayo, where many buildings important to Argentine history are centered. See the Casa Rosada (Government House), the Metropolitan Cathedral, and the Cabildo, the first City Hall built during Spanish rule.

Then visit La Boca, Buenos Aires’s first merchant and fishing port. We’ll have time to visit the famous Caminito, an outdoor museum and art show where painters offer their tango pictures, or stroll along the renovated waterfront promenade. Our tour passes by the beautiful Colon Theater. Built in 1908, this is one of the world’s most famous opera houses, and international stars vie to perform here as they do at Milan’s La Scala and Vienna’s State Opera House. We’ll also visit the Recoleta District with its elegant homes, fashionable restaurants and shops, and famous cemetery where Eva Peron is buried.

This afternoon is free for you to relax or make your own discoveries. The most memorable part of your visit to Buenos Aires may well be this evening's Home-Hosted Dinner. Take a seat at the table of an Argentine family, share their meal, chat, learn about each other, and make new friends. Prepare yourself for an evening seasoned with good conversation and fellowship.

After an early breakfast we fly south to Calafate, a boomtown near Argentina’s border with Chile and deep in the renowned and rugged land of Patagonia.

For 65 million years, the land here has been raised by chaotic volcanic eruptions and carved aimlessly by massive glaciers, creating a mystical series of jagged islands, interconnected fjords and channels, and mountainside glacial lakes. The area is named for the indigenous calafate bush—locals say eating its berries will ensure your return to this mystical region.

Our flight to Calafate is approximately 5 hours, and we should arrive around noon. After transferring to our hotel, join your Trip Leader for an Orientation Walk around this small city. You’ll have the rest of the afternoon and evening to explore at leisure.

Dinner tonight is on your own.

Today we enjoy a full-day excursion to Los Glaciares National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Created in 1937, Los Glaciares is the second-largest national park in Argentina, and comprises more than 1,700 square miles and nearly 50 large glaciers. These glaciers are fed by a giant icecap (the largest continental ice extension after Antarctica) that begins in the Andes and occupies well over a third of the park’s total area.

As we’ll discover during our visit, the glaciers here are unique. Unlike other glaciers, which typically formed at least 2,500 meters (roughly 8,200 feet) above sea level, the icy marvels at Los Glaciares form much lower, around 1,500 meters (or nearly 5,000 feet). The lower points of origin are a boon to visitors, as they offer unique access—both visually and physically—to glaciers. We’ll have a boxed lunch during our full-day excursion in the park.

Our small group will understand just how important this difference is when we encounter Perito Moreno Glacier, a pristine marvel towering nearly 200 feet above Lake Argentino. It is named after Francisco Moreno, a 19th-century Argentine explorer who helped resolve his country’s border dispute with neighboring Chile. The constant, cyclical movement of Perito Moreno’s ice mass often forces the glacier to "calve." This means that smaller chunks of ice fracture and break off from the glacier—a "birthing" of icebergs that’s usually accompanied by thunderous noises. It’s quite a spectacle, and can occur at any time, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed that we’ll be lucky enough to witness an iceberg calve.

However, ice isn’t the only thing we’ll see today. Just east of the ice fields are areas of southern beech forest and wind-swept Patagonian steppes. As we journey overland to and from Perito Moreno, we’ll pass through scenic forests filled with nires, lengas, and cherry trees.

We return to our hotel in Calafate late this afternoon. Dinner tonight is on your own.

After breakfast in Calafate, we travel overland toward Chile by motorcoach, a journey lasting approximately eight hours.

We make several stops along the way to learn about the landscapes and natural features of Patagonia. Our destination is Torres del Paine, whose national park was declared a World Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 1978 and is renowned as one of the most remote, beautiful, and unspoiled places in the world. The landscape is rich and diverse in dramatic geological formations, which combine in several distinct ecosystems, from the wind-bent grasses of the plains to the sheer, frozen cliffs of the Andes.

After crossing the border into Chile, we’ll arrive at the park in the afternoon and enjoy a guided tour. The park comprises about 935 square miles and is part of the Paine Massif, granite mountains that emerge suddenly from the plains of the Patagonian steppes and are capped by crumbly sedimentary rock that used to lie on the valley floor. This granite intrusion-one of the most recognizable mountain profiles in the world-was formed about 12 million years ago, making the Paine Massif quite young geologically. Sedimentary rock and magma collided violently and were thrust high into the air. After the ice age, when the ice fields covering the base of the massif began to melt, water and wind carved the rock into huge towers of varying shapes, at heights up to 9,000 feet. Some of these are covered in permanent ice. At our level, the crushed rock and sediment colors the lakes in the park from a milky gray to yellows and greens and the dramatic blue caused by blue algae.

The glaciers of the park are in quick retreat-up to 56 feet a year for the last 90 years, creating a remarkable study of soil creation and plant development from bare rock to thick forest. The flora of the park ranges from grassland to southern beech forests. Many parts of the park were too remote for the cattle and sheep ranchers, and so they exist today in a pristine state. More than 40 mammals make their home in the park, including the guanaco, puma, and Patagonian gray fox. Some of the world's rarest bird species—the Andean condor, the crested cara cara, and the black vulture among them—are found here as well.

From the park we proceed to check in to our hotel, where we enjoy dinner this evening.

We’ll spend a second day exploring the myriad wonders of Torres del Paine, hiking along its scenic trails and keeping our eyes peeled for indigenous fauna such as the guanaco, a cousin of the camel, the ostrich-like ñandú, and condors winging overhead. We have an included boxed lunch, then set off toward Puerto Natales, with a stop to view the striking mountain peak of Cerro Castillo along the way. We’ll check in to our hotel in Puerto Natales and enjoy an included dinner this evening.

After breakfast, we’ll visit a Patagonian estancia (sheep ranch), where we’ll remain to enjoy an included lunch. Then, we drive into Punta Arenas, a bustling port overlooking the Straits of Magellan.

We’ll take an orientation walk and have some free time for exploring on our own. Then, we’ll head to the pier to board the Via Australis or Stella Australis our home for the next four nights as we cruise the legendary waters of the Strait of Magellan around Tierra del Fuego.

Over the next four nights, we’ll explore the channels and fjords that border the Tierra del Fuego archipelago, the mystical “Land of Fire” ... sail through the Strait of Magellan and Beagle Channel, named for Charles Darwin's ship, which sailed through its waters in 1834 ... and encounter ancient glaciers on part of the Darwin Mountain Range. Our maritime cruising begins this evening, as our ship departs Punta Arenas and sails eastward through the Strait of Magellan toward Ainsworth Bay.

Tonight, we gather together with our ship’s captain and crew, our Trip Leader, and our fellow travelers for a Welcome Dinner. During our cruise, all meals are included while we're onboard ship.

Please note: During your cruise, all shore landings take place weather permitting. This is especially true at Cape Horn, notorious for seas that are among the roughest in the world, which may prevent any possibility of landing.

As dawn breaks this morning, we enter the Almirantazgo Inlet and sail into Ainsworth Bay, mooring near the 120-foot-high Marinelli Glacier.

During a shore excursion (weather permitting) we hope to observe a colony of elephant seals and walk along quiet trails through a Magellanic forest teeming with evergreens and deciduous trees. We continue cruising to Tucker Islet, where (from October to March) we can catch sight of Magellanic penguins, distinguishable by the wide black strips under their chins and inverted horseshoe shapes on their stomachs.

We’ll navigate the main part of the Beagle Channel today as we sail toward the Pia Glacier. Weather permitting, we’ll step ashore here and survey the glacier from its originating point in the Darwin Mountain Range to where it meets the sea.

The play of light, reflection, and shadow against the glacial ice, which is of varying density and moisture content, creates a profound palette of subtle hues. After returning to the ship, we’ll sail along the Beagle Channel’s northwestern arm and through majestic Glacier Alley.

Though the movement of ice in this region appears to be “"glacially slow” to our eyes, this dynamic environment is actually in constant flux, all the more so in recent years due to the effects of global warming. A 2003 study led by researchers at the U.S. Jet Propulsion Laboratory found that the Patagonia glaciers of Chile and Argentina are melting so rapidly that they are making a significant contribution to the rise of the sea level. They determined that ice has been lost at a rate equal to a .04-millimeter rise in ocean water each year between 1975 and 2000. The team combined data from the ground study of 63 of the largest Patagonia ice fields and data from a 2000 space shuttle mission. In addition to a general increase in melting, the team found accelerated ice loss—about .1 millimeter per year—between 1995 and 2000.

Researchers believe that a number of factors have combined to change the environment here: a rise in air temperature, a decrease in precipitation, and the unique nature of the Patagonia ice fields, which are dominated by “calving” glaciers. Calving glaciers spawn icebergs directly into the ocean and have different dynamics than the glaciers that end on land and melt at their front ends. Calving glaciers, researchers said, are more sensitive to climate change once they are pushed out of their delicate equilibrium, making this region the fastest area of glacial retreat on Earth.

Today we sail through the Beagle and Murray channels as we make our way to Cape Horn, a rocky promontory rising nearly 1,400 feet above the water.

Weather permitting, we'll go ashore on the island and visit Cape Horn National Park, where we'll survey the seascape where the Atlantic and Pacific oceans meet.

In the afternoon, we'll disembark in historic Wulaia Bay, once the site of the region's largest native settlements. Here we'll learn about the Yamana or Yaghan people that used to live around the Beagle Channel. This area is also renowned for the vastness of its vegetation and beauty of its landscapes—which may explain why Charles Darwin's chose it as a landing point during his famous voyage of the Beagle. We'll stroll through a forest of Lengas, Coigües, Canelos, ferns and other native vegetation to a scenic look out point.

This morning, we bid farewell to our captain and crew as our cruise ends in Ushuaia, the “City at the End of the World.”

Ushuaia is a former penal colony whose name is a Yamana Indian word for “bay that stretches into the sunset.” Today, it’s a small but busy port with a frontier atmosphere. The snowcapped Andes rise on one side of town, while the magnificent Beagle Channel extends from the other.

After disembarkation, we’ll tour Ushuaia aboard rugged 4x4 vehicles, exploring its surroundings and journeying into valleys of the Andes. We’ll conclude our tour with a visit to a local home to share a snack with residents and discuss what life is like at "the end of the world."

The remainder of your afternoon is at leisure.

After breakfast, we’ll transfer to the airport for our flight to Buenos Aires. You’ll have some free time in Buenos Aires after we arrive.

This evening we’ll share our memories of South America during a Farewell Dinner at a local restaurant. Afterwards, if you like, you can join our optional excursion to a tango show. We’ll see performances by dancers who show how the dramatic tango should be done.

If you’re taking the optional post-trip extension, you’ll transfer to the airport this morning and fly to Iguassu Falls. (You’ll tour the Parana Delta as described below at the end of your extension).

Otherwise, we’ll spend the morning touring the area where the Parana River empties into the Rio de la Plata on its way into the Atlantic, forming a huge delta. This exotic landscape is just half an hour from the city but seems a million miles away. Traditional houses on stilts (pilotes) are surrounded by lush subtropical vegetation and built on islands that are separated by a twisting maze of waterways. Enjoy a relaxing boat ride in this scenic area, which is one of Latin America’s most unique environments.

We return to Buenos Aires, where lunch is on your own and you have the afternoon free to savor the sights and sounds of Buenos Aires for one last time. Early this evening, transfer to the airport to board your overnight flight home.