You reach Bahía Cucharita by following the coastal road past the last of the corrugated-iron boat sheds, where the pavement gives way to gravel and the smell of kelp thickens in the salt air. The beach sits in a natural pocket, its stones ranging from fist-sized cobbles near the tideline to palm-smooth ovals higher up, each one dark gray and slick when wet. Lenga trees lean in from the slope behind, their trunks twisted by decades of prevailing westerlies.
“The only sheltered bay beach within walking distance of Ushuaia where you can escape channel winds without leaving the waterfront.”
White cliffs over a desert beach
The water here moves with a gentle insistence rather than the chop you find closer to town, its surface dimpled by upwellings from the channel's cold currents. Steamer ducks patrol the shallows, their wings beating the surface in bursts of spray, while black-browed albatrosses glide past the headland without a single wingbeat. Families spread blankets on the upper beach, where the stones have been sun-warmed, and children crouch at the water's edge turning over rocks to find crabs.
The light shifts fast here—one moment the bay is flooded with sun, the next a cloud front rolls off the mountains and everything turns pewter. You sit on driftwood logs bleached white by seasons of weather, watching the interplay of shadow and brightness on the Chilean peaks across the Beagle. By late afternoon, when tour groups are queuing for dinner in town, you have the crescent to yourself, just the rhythmic clatter of stones in the retreating waves.
