Ushuaia Penguins: Martillo Island by Boat or on Foot

A Small Island With a Big Lease

The island covers about 6 hectares. Before the penguins it was used by the Yaghan people, and the island still turns up in accounts of the channel's aboriginal past. Today the colony sits inside land leased from Estancia Harberton, the ranch founded by the Bridges family, and the lease is what makes the protection work.

There is no public pier and no casual access. Landing without a licence is not allowed.

Who Lives There

The colony is mostly Magellanic penguins, reported in the range of roughly 2,000 to 3,000 breeding pairs. Gentoo penguins nest there too in smaller numbers. And since around 2010 a few King penguins have appeared at the colony from time to time, which is unusual this far north on the channel.

The Gentoos are the ones you most often see standing guard at their pebble nests while the Magellanics come and go from burrows in the soft ground.

What the Official Pages Do Not Say

No official page publishes a current, fixed count of the colony, so the 2,000 to 3,000 pair figure is an estimate reported by estancia and tourism sources rather than a census. There is also no published official price for the landing permit. The Pira Tour site, the long-running landing operator, blocks automated fetching, so we quote platform prices from tour listings instead and flag them as such.

The Season in Short

The penguins occupy the island for breeding from roughly September or October through April. The reliable visitor window, the one both the tourism office and the operators treat as dependable, is November to March. Sailings run in that window, generally between 09:00 and 17:00 from the municipal pier.

Month by Month

September is a gamble. Some birds arrive, many do not, and the colony can look half empty. October builds as the Magellanics dig in.

December brings chicks, which is the month photographers like best. January and February are peak season, full colony and full boats. By March the birds are staging and the crowds thin.

April is the moult and departure, when sailing schedules wind down.

Winter

From about May to August the colony is empty and there are no sailings to it. The catamarans that run in winter do the channel and lighthouse circuits instead. If your trip falls in the cold months, plan around the Beagle Channel sea lion and cormorant navigations and leave the penguins for another visit.

Our best time to visit page has the wider weather picture.

The Catamaran Option

The half-day sailings leave the Ushuaia municipal pier, cruise the channel past sea lion rocks, cormorant colonies and the Les Éclaireurs lighthouse, then slow to a drift off Martillo. You watch the colony from the deck. The boat keeps a legal distance, the guide gives commentary, and you get close enough for good photographs of birds coming and going through the water.

At $110 to $115 listed and around five hours, this is the option most visitors take. No permit is involved on your side, because the boat itself holds the concession.

The Landing Option

The landing is different in kind, not just in degree. One operator family holds the licence to walk visitors inside the colony, and the trip goes overland to Harberton first, then by zodiac across to the island. On the island you get about one hour on foot, in small groups, on a fixed path.

The rules are strict. You never touch or feed a penguin, you keep two metres away, no flash photography, and the guide enforces all of it. Unlicensed operators cannot land you, no matter what a street seller claims.

Who Should Pay the Difference

The landing day lists at $530 against $110 for the boat, a gap of $420 for one hour on the island. Our estimate is that the landing is worth it for three kinds of traveller. Photographers who need ground-level shots of Gentoos and chicks.

Travellers for whom penguins were the headline reason for coming to Patagonia. And anyone who has been to a viewing gallery elsewhere and wants the rare version. If penguins are a bonus on your itinerary rather than the point, the boat is a genuinely good experience and leaves you a free afternoon.

Direct by Catamaran

The boat trips leave from the Ushuaia municipal pier, in season between 09:00 and 17:00 with several sailings daily. The run east along the channel to Martillo takes about an hour each way, with wildlife stops on the way, which is how the outing fills five hours. You need nothing but warm layers and a booked seat.

Overland via Harberton

The landing day goes by road first, east out of Ushuaia along Ruta 3 and beyond, to Estancia Harberton on the channel shore. From there a zodiac makes the short crossing to Martillo. The vehicle leg is long, which is why the landing day runs 10 hours.

The trade is that you also see the ranch and the Acatushun museum on the way, so the day is not only about the penguins.

The Almanza Route

There is a third road option some operators use. The route via Puerto Almanza, a small fishing settlement on the channel even further east, reaches the Harberton side from a different road. We describe it as an alternative routing because operators shift between the two depending on the day and road conditions.

No official page publishes fixed timings for it, so treat any quoted leg time as the operator's own.

Half Day or Full Day

Our sum on the time math is simple. Half-day boat trips cost you a morning or an afternoon, 5 hours around a 09:00 to 17:00 sailing window. The landing day costs a whole day, 10 hours door to door.

The 11-hour Gable Island combo adds a walk on Gable and an estancia lunch on top. If you have three days in town, the landing fits day two with an easy day either side, see ushuaia in 3 days.

The Oldest Estancia in Tierra del Fuego

Thomas Bridges founded Harberton in 1886, making it the oldest estancia in Tierra del Fuego. Bridges was a missionary who had lived among the Yaghan for years before taking up ranching, and the property carries that layered history. The Bridges family still runs it, and it is the family that leases Martillo and licenses the colony landing.

Museo Acatushun

The ranch's second act is the Acatushun museum, a research collection of skeletons of birds and marine mammals gathered from the Beagle Channel shores. Tours run at fixed times in season. If your landing day stops here, the museum visit is usually built into the schedule.

Entry to the ranch and museum is charged separately from your penguin tour and is repriced by season, so check the estancia's own site before travel for the current fee.

Visiting on Its Own

You do not need a penguin tour to see Harberton. In the 2025/26 season the ranch opened from 11 October to March, roughly 12:00-19:00, with guided house tours mid-afternoon. There is no public bus.

Independent visitors arrive by car, taxi or on one of the ranch-focused day trips. Our estancia harberton page has the full visiting picture.

First, the island has two names. Martillo is the common one, Yecapasela the older one, and neither has a Wikidata entry at our check, which is why this page links the Spanish Wikipedia article instead. Second, the colony protection is a lease, not a park.

The national park system has nothing to do with Martillo. The land is leased from a ranching family, which is why a single operator family holds the landing right. Third, King penguins started appearing at the colony only around 2010, so older guidebooks that call Martillo a Magellanic-only island are out of date.

Fourth, the island was a Yaghan site long before it was a penguin sanctuary, which the estancia's own history accounts record. Fifth, there is no published official price for the landing. Every price you see online, including ours, traces back to a tour platform listing rather than a government fee schedule.

If a seller quotes you a price that is dramatically below the $530 the licensed landing lists at, that is your warning sign.