Tierra del Fuego

Nate and I spent a night camping at the Estancia Harberton, a historic farm 90 kilometers from Ushuaia, the world's most southerly city. We arrived after some complex negotiations with a shuttle driver who seemed perplexed by our desire to go to Harberton one day and return the next. She finally agreed to drive us and return to pick us up the next day. She drove us the two hours to Harberton, keeping up a running commentary on the countryside, industry in Ushuaia, the arrival of the beaver to Tierra del Fuego, and recommended excursions in the area. For every topic she had a brochure, a photograph, or a beaver skull for us to look at, which she fished out of a backpack next to her, significantly more engaged in giving us a thorough tour than in keeping her eyes on the twisting, shoulderless gravel road.

Harberton was established on land given to the missionary Thomas Bridges in 1886 by the president of Argentina, in gratitude for Bridges' work establishing a mission and the first permanent settlement on Tierra del Fuego. Owned now by the fourth generation of Bridges, the estancia was a working sheep farm until 1995, when a particularly harsh winter killed most of the flock. Now it's mainly a site for visitors and home to a scientific research station and museum that boasts the world's largest collection of marine mammal skeletons.

When we arrived, the tea house attendant rustled up for us some ancient camping registration forms printed some time in the last century. Camping is apparently not in high demand, and when we arrived at the campsite, four kilometers from the main house, we found we had the place to ourselves. We shared it only with the occasional Fuegian fox and flock of upland geese. We spent a cold, windy night there, waking up to snow and sleet. Our tent stayed dry through it all, which was something of a first.

A student living at Harberton and doing research took us on a tour of the museum, explaining how to remove rotting flesh from a whale carcass (with soap and water), what the rarest marine mammals are, and why the museum has so many pilot whales. She also showed us the lab, where closets full of animal skeletons are stored, asking us to avert our eyes from the scientists' living quarters, which she said were too messy to be seen. She took us to a telescope she had set up to look for dolphins in Harberton Bay. She has not seen any yet.