11/14: Ushuaia Prison & All Aboard for Antarctica!

Ushuaia, located at the very southern tip of Argentina, cannot in any way be described as a pretty town but I did like how the region's history had been brought to life in  the many murals around the city.

Who could possibly resist seeing a museum billed as the End of the World Prison - not us, that was for sure, all the more so as it was located in the city's Naval Base. I was surprised that we weren't asked to show any documents or anything before wandering around the base.

The canoe was built in 1989 to be as similar as possible to those used by the now extinct indigenous Yamana people to travel around the Beagle Channel and the islands surrounding Cape Horn. The last canoe seen that was used by the Yamana people was from the beginning of the 20th century. This canoe was used to navigate the channel for three days though it broke in the process because no one knew how to carry and take care of it!

The coming of the Europeans to this region in southern Argentina eventually caused the extinction of the Yamanas and other indigenous tribes, even though the new settlers didn't intend harm. The clothes given by the Europeans to cover the Yamana people's nakedness made the indigenous people sick more often than not, both for the change of custom and for the dirty condition of the clothes. Before that, rain and water kept them naturally clean and fire kept them warm and got them dry quickly. Their occasional shelters were kept naturally clean by nature, i.e. rain. 

In addition to diseases and dietary changes, the Europeans' exploited natural resources the Yamanas depended on. The settlers cut down trees, looked for gold, fished and hunted for sea lions, the principal diet for Yamana people. They also ate mushrooms, shellfish and whale meat when one ran aground on the beach. 

All that changed when they were forced to live in housing which was also often dirty. When they were exposed to unfamiliar diseases such as tuberculosis, flu, pneumonia, measles, etc, most Yamana people died. The Yamana weren't able to adapt to the European civilization and the change in lifestyle it meant. 

Measles decimated the native Yamana people and reduced them to half their former number by 1884. In 1886, pneumonia and tuberculosis appeared. According to a census, there were 1,000 Yamanas in the mission in 1884, 397 in 1886 and only 110 in 1897. What a tragic ending to a way of life and of an entire people because of other people's well-meaning religion.

The idea of a penal colony in Tierra del Fuego began in 1882, a year after the Boundaries Treaty with Chile was signed. There were already two successful examples in the world: France had penal colonies in New Caledonia and Algeria, and England had one in Tasmania, Australia, that I visited with a friend this past March.

The reason for this prison was to solve the penitentiary problem, to create a first settlement in the distant southern regions and to protect Argentine sovereignty by means of an effective settlement. Prisoners sent to the Tierra or Land down south were taken in Buenos Aires, the capital, to the ships by trucks that belonged to the police and placed in the hold with a large chamber pot. They remained their for about a month - the time the voyage took. Fine coal dust came into the holds so prisoners arrived covered with it and letting the black dust out when they coughed.

The trips that took the prisoners to the south of the country also took goods and provisions, everything necessary for life in Ushuaia. At the end of the 19th century, minors were sent, even those that now would be called street children. 

The first ten convicts arrived in 1883 and had been chosen for their skills in installing a lighthouse. The town of Ushuaia was founded in October of that year.

We have toured many a prison all over the world but never had we seen a recreation of a prison cell before that had what looked like the original prisoner who inhabited the cell, complete with a detailed description of his crimes and of his victim.

New prisoners were sent to the 'grating yard' where they were examined in case they carried forbidden articles such as weapons or tools. Shackles were then put on that were joined between them by an iron chain or bar round the so they could only walk 15-20 cms apart from another convict. I read that "Three hammer blows on every iron nail must have been three heavy blows on the heart of every convict waiting in formation and on those waiting in their cells for a change of destination. It is said that most hard and insensitive convicts looked at the blacksmith with arrogance while he was doing his work, but they walked a few meters their spirit broke down as they began to feel how iron hurt their skin, how limited their movements were, and realized what their fate was."

This cell had been kept in the same state as when the building was found.

After convicts were bathed, new suits were handed out and they had their hair shaved. According to regulations, those convicts sentenced to correctional punishments were allowed to wear a mustache. That wasn't permitted for those serving a prison sentence! Prisoners were allocated cells based on their crime: those accused of larceny and robbery were lodged in one wing or pavilion, those guilty of swindle and deceit were placed in another, murderers in another. The last wing was reserved for those with infectious diseases.

As part of the entrance procedure, prisoners were given a number to be worn on their jackets, caps and pants if they were sentenced to prison and red badge on their caps if they were murderers. I was surprised that there were just eighteen cells per floor. There was a hierarchy among prisoners,with murderers considering themselves superior to, and having no contact with, ordinary thieves. The latter divided into classes depending on the severity of their crimes.

The prison was unique in that it never had an encircling wall, just a two-meter high wire fence with four layers of barbed wire which separated the prison from the village of Ushuaia. As a result, settlers could see inside the prison and the inmates could look out.

Sports were introduced in 1940 as a way of improving the convicts' lives.

Another odd and rather disconcerting portrayal of one of the prisoners, Alberto Andino, who was only 35 but looked decades older in November of 1930.

The convicts worked in the prison carpenter's shop and the  blacksmith's shop.

About half of the inmates also worked in the quarry, the power plant and the manual laundry. Others made coffers, walking sticks, small boxes, pens and even clothes hangers that were bought by locals or occasional tourists who made their way to Ushuaia.

Apart from toiling in the workshops, prisoners worked on the construction of the prison and also outside the prison on public works projects such as fixing up and enlarging the pier from spring until fall, building a road that led to the north of the island, installing a public sewage and water system, street lights and anything else that was needed. These jobs paid better than the inside ones and led to a reduction in the prisoners' sentences. 

Inmates received three different types of rations, depending on their work, if they were ill and those that were crippled or couldn't work in 'production tasks.' The amount of food depended on the type of work that was done. I had never heard before that prison employees were also given the same food as the prisoners although they received more of it!

The photos certainly left the impression of a very 'humane' prison unlike so many others we'd seen where inmates suffered physical abuse and torture and were more often than not stuffed in small cells with many others.

On the grounds was a large orchard as well as hens and other poultry. As time went by, greenhouses were added and jams were prepared. The prison provided all employees with bread and a share of meat for each family.

This reminded me of a Dr. Seuss character!

Our 1st penguins - don't worry, there will be some real ones soon!

One wing of the former prison had been converted into an Art Gallery. Two compelling photographs from 1882 showed the Yamana people who had been forced to live in one of the religious missions in Ushuaia as European missionaries attempted to evangelize the indigenous people. 

The people were forced to give up their nomadic ways for a sedentary lifestyle, change their customs and eating habits, and learn to farm. All these changes plus contracting diseases they hadn't been previously exposed to, led to the fast decline of the Yamanas.

The cells in this wing looked far different from those we'd seen earlier! Each of the cells had been turned into a miniature gallery.

The Fram was a polar ship built to endure the pressure of the sea waters when they froze. The pioneering polar explorers preferred wood over steel because they believed the former was more flexible and could withstand more hits and pressure. When it was tightly trapped by ice, the Fram could rise thanks to her shape of having three wooden planing layers that were isolated from each other by tarred paper. 

As a result, she was very heavy and slow but did, nonetheless, manage to reach the North Pole ice as well as Antarctic ice when Norwegian explorer Roald Amudsen was the first man to reach the South Pole in 1911, ahead of Robert Scott by just one month. Amudsen's success was because he used sleighs pulled by huskies rather than Siberian ponies as Scott did.

Argentina started the first tourist trip to Antarctica in 1958. That was followed by two cruises in 1959, and two more in 1967. More followed after those.

A map of Antarctica followed by images of the types of penguins that live on the southernmost continent. If you click on the second photo to make it larger, you'll see the Gentoo and Chinstrap penguins, the only ones we saw where we were in Antarctica.

In another wing of the former prison were some intriguing sculptures. The Patagonian shores were the scene of mass slaughtering in the 19th century until around 1920, when hunting was banned almost everywhere. Using sticks, axes or harpoons, hunters attacked penguin or sea lions colonies until they almost disappeared. The oil extracted from their flesh, skin and fat was highly valued for industrial use and for lighting.

Whale vertebra:

This explosive head from a whaler harpoon was found on Enterprise Island in Antarctica in 1920 amid the remains of a floating factory. The harpoon was shot with a chaser; this grenade was mounted on the tip to inflict a deadly wound to the whale which was hooked with the rest of the harpoon.

Carving in a whale vertebra of an indigenous Yamana harpooning a sea lion:

A bone carving of an indigenous Selkam couple, another indigenous group:

Necklaces made of carved bone:

I was particularly drawn to the six huskies, sleigh and driver that were also carved out of whale bone as my eldest brother, Andrew, brought home to my hometown of Ottawa something very similar from when he had worked in Canada's Hudson Bay where there was a large indigenous community.

The dominoes were made of whale bone and were in their original cedar case.

Scrimshaw, the art of carving and engraving that whalers used to practice on the surface of tusks and bone waste, started on whaling ships in the Pacific Ocean between 1817 and 1824  and continued until the ban of commercial catching of whales. Scrimshaw was a hobby for the crew when there few winds. Few pieces were signed. At the beginning, the work was done with oil-soaked needles. Soot and tobacco juice were used to visualize the etched designs. They made ship models as well as various utensils including pasta crimpers and egg baskets as well as hair combs and hair pins. This engraving of a Dutch Harbor was made on a sperm whale's tooth!

In the prison yard was the only thing that remained of the famous Prisoners Train that was used for hard labor such as quarrying, logging and transporting wood. The train used to be the narrowest gauge for freight trains in the world.

I was surprised how much we both enjoyed the former prison located at the naval base as it certainly kept our attention for several hours. I think for me it was learning a lot more about the Yamana than we had yesterday on the sailing trip yesterday of the Beagle Channel and also viewing the fabulous scrimshaw pieces.

The sculpture near the center of Ushuaia was dedicated to the action taken by the Argentine Navy, according to the sign. 

Why oh why is there a photo of dandelions, you're surely asking? Well, only because the biggest ones in the world must be here in the southern hemisphere, we figured, after seeing such humongous ones everywhere!

Views along the shore of the port:

Nope, definitely not our ship we'd board in a few hours for a ten-day trip of Antarctica!

Since we were leaving from the city of the same name, ours was fittingly the Ushuaia. It was much older and had been a former scientific vessel. It had more 'character' to put a very positive spin on it than the top of the line cruise ship we'd just seen! 

A block from the waterfront was the intriguingly-named Museum of the End of the World but we decided to only see it from the outside.

The Monoxile Canoe was made of a piece of solid wood and was found in the Black Lagoon where it was likely made by early lumberjacks in the Ovanda River sawmills. 

The colorful murals portrayed the history of the region beginning with the first inhabitants of the Beagle Channel where Ushuaia was located. 

It was hard to appreciate the mural on the front of the city's Post Office because of all the graffiti.

Another mural portrayed the writer and activist Rudolfo Walsh who "disappeared" on March 3rd, 1977, amid the country's civil war. I wrote 'disappeared' in quotation marks because the police was accused of killing thousands of Argentines, but their bodies were never found. They were therefore known as "disappeared."

The nicest house we saw in Ushuaia was this one a block from our humble bed and breakfast.

Much more typical were homes like this one that looked like a good strong wind might blow it down.

There were also lots of what looked like mountain cabins:

This B&B was our home away from home before and after our cruise to Antarctica and before the next one to Patagonia.

About 4 that afternoon, Steven and I were as happy as clams at the prospect of boarding the M/V Ushuaia that was operated by Antarpply Expeditions and that we’d booked 18 months earlier. We didn't now what quite to expect but were just so glad to be going for the ride.

We immediately found our cabin and were very glad that we'd left one bag in the B&B since we'd be back there again as there was precious little extra room for anything in our cozy 100 square foot abode! We shared the toilet and shower with two people through a door we could each access from our respective rooms. It worked very well generally, except for those few times when the guys forgot to unlock our door to the bathroom from the inside so we couldn't get in!

Steven, gentleman that he is, took the upper bunk but he had the window to look out of so perhaps it was all fair and square in the end! I should have taken more photos of our room as this one doesn't show the sink and medicine cabinet above it to Steven's left. You can just see the edge of  the small desk/table with a single chair to his right. We also had a fair sized closet to store our clothes, parkas, boots that were supplied by the ship and our life jackets. The room was so well designed, it really lacked for nothing except one extra chair would have been a bonus IF there had been room for it somewhere!

We then went exploring as dinner wouldn't be until 8, which turned out to be the norm every night.

It was hard to think of a more magical beginning of a cruise to Antarctica than this rainbow!

The city of Ushuaia slowly receding in the distance:

At the Orientation that night, the captain welcomed all 90 passengers and then turned it over to Pablo, the Crew Expedition Leader. He told us the ship would take the shape of the waves as it was built in the US as a research vessel. It would take us about 38 hours to cross the Drake Passage south of Ushuaia and then we’d enter the Gelash Strait on our way to reaching the continent of Antarctica. I think Pablo was serious when he commented our ship used to be a spy ship until 2001 when it was used to spy along the coast of Argentina and Chile but it was hard to tell with the often-humorous Pablo!

He said the crew ‘expected’ good weather when crossing the notorious Drake Passage but added he wasn’t God! He warned that if it got very windy, the ship liked to swell like a Figure 8. Oh, swell, I thought!!

The rule at all times was one hand for us and one hand for the ship but we got pretty lax about that after the first few days when the ship ceased to roll so much. We were just hoping the seas would be nothing like in the photo as that was pretty alarming!

He cautioned the passengers to put all sensitive belongings in between clothing and to lay the one chair in the cabin down on the floor so it doesn’t roll away. He and the rest of the crew spent several minutes cautioning us the best way to hold on to the banister when going up or down the very steep stairs to accommodate the swells and to minimize the chances of our falling en route. When we were moving about the ship, we should have both hands free which meant everything should be in our backpacks especially during the Drake Passage. 

The safety briefing included our all donning life jackets but those would only be the ones we’d have to use in case of an emergency on board. When going ashore on the zodiacs, we’d have to wear far less cumbersome life jackets fortunately that we kept in our rooms the entire time.

When the ship was moving, we had to make sure to never touch any door frame as otherwise we stood a good chance of losing our fingers when doors slam shut unexpectedly fast! He didn’t want to alarm us but alerted us that had happened to a passenger on a previous voyage who wasn’t being careful. He said the goal of the crew was to bring us home in one piece, thus the reason for the safety warnings. 

The safety briefing took place in the ship's sole Lounge where I spent pretty well all my time when we weren't either in bed, at meals or taking shore excursions. There was also a small space on the other side of the lounge to access the one dining room and the lower level where our room was. Steven preferred spending more of his spare time on his bunk relaxing alone.

We were surprised that there was an open-door policy on board, which meant no locked cabins. Pablo said that was because of safety so that the crew could immediately get to the passengers in the event of an emergency. Valuable items could be put in a locked safe but, strangely enough, that wasn’t available for 36 hours. Is the open-door policy one others are familiar with when taking cruises?

This was the only time I can remember any par of the ship was off limits.

The crew posted the next day's Daily Program each evening but we soon realized much of it was wishful thinking as everything depended on the weather!

The captain had an open bridge policy from 8 to 8 which meant that passengers were welcome but we needed to remember that the crew was working and therefore to be silent when on the bridge. There was of course no WiFi on board – that was because we were on holidays and we could forget all about work, Pablo said!

The last rays of the sun were well after 10 that night.

We entered open seas and the oft-treacherous Drake Passage around midnight. Steven and I had taken the precaution of asking our doctors for scopalmine or anti-nausea patches and we had applied them shortly before boarding the ship so we were cautiously optimistic we wouldn't get seasick.

Next post: Crossing the Drake Passage.

Posted on December 7th, 2019, from Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay, as I sit in our hotel room's outer area while 'listening' or being bombarded with music from a bar next door! Judging from our experience last night, the music will go on for a few more hours. Fortunately, the music didn't appear to bother Steven much as he's already fast asleep. We were given the option of a quieter room when we checked in yesterday but it was far smaller so chose this one instead so we could be serenaded to live music!