Arrive in Argentina today and transfer independently to your comfortable hotel. Spend your free time exploring the amazing architecture of Buenos Aires, or simply relax after your long international flight. Optional tours today include a walking city tour, cultural city tour, or a dinner tango show. Overnight.

Transfer this morning to the airport to board your flight to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, a must-see Patagonia travel stop. With previous incarnations as a missionary outpost and, subsequently, a prison town, Ushuaia is now most well-known as the "Gateway to Antarctica." From its dramatic setting between the Beagle Channel and the rugged glaciated peaks rising from the landscape, opportunities for hiking and exploring abound. The afternoon is free to wander local museums or explore nearby trails.

Embark on your boat this morning at the Ushuaia tourist pier. You'll travel via the Beagle Channel and make stops at the legendary Les Eclereurs Island and Sea Lions and Sea Birds Island. Sea lion specimens can be seen from the boat in their permanent habitat as you approach Sea Lions island to the southwest. Continue traveling to the island of the birds, a great place to watch Magellan and Imperial cormorants. Proceed to the Les Éclaireurs Lighthouse, which is situated in the same archipelago as the Monte Cervantes disaster in 1930. The Tnel and Fique ranches are seen as you travel through the Paso Chico on the way back. Mt. Martial, which is magnificent, can also be seen. 
Duration: 2,5 to 3 hours.
Recommendations: Coat, hat, gloves, waterproof jacket. In summer: Sunglasses and sunscreen.

There's free time to enjoy lunch before setting you depart from our office at the Ushuaia tourist port, you'll travel northeast on Nationals route 3 & J, the fabled path to Estancia Harberton. Sail for 15 minutes in a semi-rigid boat from Harberton harbor to Martillo Island. You will go on an adventure like no other as you spend an hour on the island walking among Gentoo and Magellanic penguins.

Penguins establish themselves on the island during the summer. They live in an environment with other species, including South American terns, petrels, cormorants, vultures, and asskúas (their primary predator). Magellanic penguins reside on Martillo Island in the Beagle Channel, a part of Estancia Harberton, from September to April. Of the three Magellanic penguin rookeries in Tierra del Fuego, The Rookery is home to over 1000 nests. Additionally, the sole colony of Gentoo penguins (Pygoscelis Papua) in South America consists of nine breeding pairs. Today, a tour guide can take visitors to a small portion of the nesting area.

Duration: 6 hrs approx. (subject to weather conditions).
Schedule: 2:30 pm from the tourist dock.
Recommendations: Bring a hat or cap, waterproof jacket, trekking shoes, gloves and sunglasses.

Note: Estancia Harberton is closed on Tuesdays

Just north of Ushuaia is the Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego, Argentina's first coastal national park. This adventure combines hiking and kayaking within the park. First, a 3 ½ hour hike takes you through forests of both high and low deciduous beech, evergreen beech, winterbark, firebrush, and more. After your hike, you'll climb into double kayaks and sail to uninhabited beaches and majestic places, just as the ancient Yamana tribe use to do thousands of years ago. The Yamana used canoes carved from tree bark to explore this same area. The crystal-clear water runs into Laguna Verde, one of the most picturesque, panoramic spots in the park. Your take-out point is Lapataia Bay, where you may see petrels, albatross, steamer ducks, and on occasion, penguins. You'll return to Ushuaia in the late afternoon .

Today you fly to the lively town of El Calafate. Overnight in El Calafate and have the evening free. Let us know if you are interested in staying on a working sheep ranch to experience the gaucho lifestyle. 

Today you drive into Parque Nacional Los Glaciares for views of the stunning Perito Moreno Glacier. This huge advancing glacier is more than 3 miles wide at its front and over 20 stories high. Take a boat across Lago Argentino and pass the massive front wall of blue ice, all the while watching for icebergs. After landing on a small beach start hiking through the beech forest to the icepack of the glacier and have the opportunity to walk on the glacier with crampons. (This Glacier trek has a minimum age of 10 and a maximum age of 65. Alternate excursions are available for those under 10 or over 65 years of age.) Eat your lunch sitting on the lateral moraine of the glacier, where you can absorb the magnificence of the glacier's anatomy and listen to its thunderous concerto of groaning and cracking ice dropping into the lake below.

Contact us if you are interested in the Big Ice Adventure, a more active excursion that spends more time on the ice. Click here for more details. 

Catch your flight to Buenos Aires and connecting flights homeward, or with more time, cross into Chile to visit Torres del Paine, travel to the coast to the Peninsula Valdes, or head north to Iguazu Falls.