Flying into Ushuaia

There was no use pretending I'd been there before: I was open-mouthed at the beauty

I’ve seen some pretty dramatic airport landings before (most memorably: Kingston, Jamaica, where the airstrip is right next to the ocean, and I was sure we were going swimming), but flying into Ushuaia was breathtaking. And not just because I was so excited to finally be there.

On the plane ride, the sky was full of clouds…but then, suddenly, there were mountains upon mountains, ridges flecked and outlined with snow. What looked like a whole football field of little baby mountains—except each of those mountains was huge.

Then I got my first glimpse of the Beagle Channel.

When I finally remembered to start taking pictures: The horizonal tail end of the Andes, known as the Cordillera Darwin, and the Beagle Channel, beyond.

There was the narrow strip of water that runs through my story, bordered by mountains on both sides. It looked just like I’d imagined it would based on maps and descriptions.

I could see all the way to the eastern opening of the Beagle Channel, the Strait of Le Maire, and the Atlantic Ocean, beyond. Then the plane banked, and I could see far toward the west, toward the fjords on the western passage of the channel.

The Beagle Channel, looking west, with Argentina on the top/left and Chile on the right. The deepest point of the Beagle Channel is the border between the two countries.

This was the homeland of the Yahgan for thousands of years, traversed only in canoe. Then Europeans came in sailboats: whalers, sealers, and explorers like Charles Darwin. In the days before the Panama Canal, this was one of the most important waterways in the world, though sailors preferred to avoid its treacherous navigation in favor of the Strait of Magellan, to the north, or Cape Horn, to the south.

The plane banked again, and we headed back toward Argentina.

In this view, Chile is below/left and Argentina is on top. See that narrow gray strip that’s a road in Chile? I became familiar with that road later on, when I got stranded on that island for a week.

Maybe because of my excitement…or my open-mouthed wonder…or the camera…the passenger sitting next to me could tell I was a tourist and that it was my first time in Ushuaia. He pointed out the city, nestled in the lap of the mountains.

“And that’s the airport landing strip,” he said.

I didn’t believe him.