The Drake Passage was rough for a little while after our dinner, but we both slept well. Neither of us got seasick on either of our two trips. We had both taken a Sealegs pill every day. It was very calm through the Beagle Strait. We had woken at our normal 5am and I chose to finish my book. This is what I have been reading.
Bill had bought the book and I had read it after him. We both cycle where we can. The ship has two cycles in the gym which look out on the Southern Ocean, so we have been there most days for 30 minutes or so. I finish my book and then we cycle here.
Reading the book, cycling, blogging, doing "The Trip" in a Les Mills spin class before coming on this trip (thanks daughter Anna for recommending it!) got me thinking about an idea. It amazes me how connected things can be and cycling creates the space to connect the dots I think. The book says that too. More about my idea later - to summarise the book first. Einstein loved bikes. Here are some bits from the book.
We arrive in Ushuaia at 6.50am. The view at breakfast (after we have cycled). There are other boats getting in ahead of the Drake Passage weather too.
And Ushuaia from our deck after we dock.
Because we are a day early, Silversea have arranged a tour to see a bit of Ushuaia's surrounds. It seemed to take a long time to get to one place, and I felt like a real tourist! And here was the view.
I did get interested in one thing our guide Victoria (who was Argentinian and very good) talked about. That was the history about the first humans here, and how they lived, before the arrival of Europeans and missionaries. She said there were two races of indigenous people who had lived in the region for 10,000 years.
Here are the Yaghans, or yáganes or yamanas, who lived along the coast in families. She said 1000 yámanas occupied both shores of the Beagle Channel up to Cape Horn.
The English called them Fuegians. Before Europeans arrived they wore no/few clothes, and they covered themselves in animal grease to keep out the cold. Remember this is as far south as Macquarie Island in the sub-Antarctic!
They lived in families and aways close to fire . . .
. . . and they huddled in their boats lighting bark fires in the bottom of the boat.
They made use of rock formations to shelter from the elements.
Over time, they had evolved significantly higher metabolisms than other humans, allowing them to generate more internal body heat. Their natural resting position was a deep squatting position, which reduced their surface area and helped to conserve heat.
They were hunters and gatherers, feeding mainly on sea lions but also rats and small deer.
After the tour there was another SilverSea option but Bill and I chose to go to the cafe we had found on our earlier visit to Ushuaia. Bill to do some reading and work, and I wanted to learn more about the indigenous peoples of Ushuaia.
This is what Tierra del Fuego looks like. The indigenous population and thousands of guanaco, a small deer-like animal, roamed the 17,000 square mile island. It's climate was described by an early settler as "65 unpleasant days per year along with 300 days of rain and storms". Blue is ice, green forest, and dark blue the Beagle Channel.
"In 1884 the Yaghan and Ona peoples of Tierra del Fuego captured the attention of many Europeans. Charles Darwin, visited the area, insisted that the inhabitants were the least civilized race on earth and, furthermore, that they were cannibals."
He was impressed to note "these people go about naked and barefoot on the snow."
The very name of this region, Tierra del Fuego (meaning "Land of Fire"), was inspired by this group of indigenous peoples. In my view looking forward from this post on, this naming was about the only acknowledgement the yamana's got.
Missionaries arrived and tried to convert them to their ways. They also tried to preserve their cultures. I am not sure how you do those two at the same time. And looking now, they did not achieve either.
Some individuals from each of these groups were taken to Buenos Aires and to Europe where they were exhibited in cages. Others were dressed in western clothes, taught English and introduced to British royalty and high society.
There were also the Ona people. They lived more in the bush, not on the coast. They hunted small deer, and fed on native plants. They were 6 feet 2 inches average height!
Their shoes.
They fed on guanco (natural deer who roamed the lands), ground rats, birds, stranded whales, fish, mussels, berries and mushrooms. Here they are hunting.
They dressed as supernatural beings to keep spirits away. They thought they had to do this for anyone misbehaving.
However these two indigenous peoples were disappearing. Between 1850 and 1910, the original population of some 6,500 people had been reduced by 85 to 90%. The stories of the Ona and Yamanas are similar to those of hunting and gathering peoples throughout the world. There is just one living native speaking Yamana. Cristina Calderón lives in Puerto Williams. She is 92, the mother of ten children and grandmother to 19.
The Museum of Yamana in Ushuaia. I didn't go and wish I had, reviews of it said well worth it, takes an hour or two and had good videos.
I found this video online which is a homage to the Yaghan people.
And a final piece of wisdom from the Maori book Mauri Ora (which Lara recommended to us, and I read at least one proverb a week).
I admire all indigenous cultures for the way they have lived off the land sustainably. I envy the Ona's and Yaghans ability to understand all that was around them, and pass it down for 10,000 years. If only Europeans had done things differently and understood and respected that, we might have learnt off each other more. Maybe there will be a renaissance. This is Martin (a missionary interested in keeping their culture) with Yaghans - it was the only picture I could find of Europeans engaged with Yaghans in the 1900's - and you can see the Yaghans are looking anything but indigenous . . .
A bit of an encyclopaedia today, but I got interested. We spent the afternoon at the cafe before going back for our last night on the ship.
Here is my favourite photo from some Silverseas gave us when we got back to the ship.
And here is the video they produced for us, made by a young South African filmmaker who came with us. He did a great job (and that's with getting very seasick on the last night on the Drake Passage when he had planned to put it all together). The German expedition leader speaking near the beginning (after captain Eric) is Martin that we had dinner with on our second night.
And that's it for Antarctica!