The land of fire, where forest meets the sea

Tierra del Fuego, the land of fire, got its name back in 1520 when the Portuguese explorer, Magellan, sailed through the straits that now bear his name and saw small fires all over the islands that surround it.  The fires were an integral part of life for the Yamana Indians who survived for 6000 years in this area.  They were the main inhabitants of Ushuaia as late as the end of the 19^th Century, but were soon decimated by diseases once European missionaries and seafarers arrived in numbers.

They were a strange bunch.  Darwin thought they could be the missing link.  And given how cold it at the end of the world, I’m surprised they lasted as long as they did. They were advanced enough to have fire and to use guanaco leather as a windbreak around that fire, but they never made the mental leap to wrap the leather around themselves in a jackety, trousery way. They were quite content to smear seal fat over their bodies for protection.  Nor did they fashion bowls or cooking pots, just speared sealions with a bone arrow on a stick and stuck them straight on the fire.  Hey ho.

Today there are no signs of the Yamana’s fire, just green, grassy mounds formed from dumped mussel shells that made up the second part of their diet.  We see several of these as we take a leisurely raft trip down the Lapataia river and then walk through the slow growing lenga and evergreen guindo forests of Tierra del Fuego national park onto the beaches of Lapataia Bay.  It is undoubtedly attractive, this land where the forest meets the sea, though it lacks the drama of the higher Andes peaks we have seen elsewhere.  In fact there are very few peaks here.  The entire area was covered in 1000m of ice during the last ice age leaving the mountains below this height with rounded tops and just a few above this height with jagged peaks..

The end of the world attracts its share of eccentrics, including the man who built a house on one of the small islands in Lapataia Bay, declared independence, pronounced himself  First Minister and now earns a living selling postcards, passport stamps and other tourist trinkets at the “post office at the end of the world” – though you can get your “end of the world” passport stamp for free in the information centre.  

There are couple of eccentric bars in town too.  We loved Almacen Ramos Generales, a café, bar, restaurant and museum rolled into one, with fantastic submarinos – hot chocolate, where you dropped your own chocolate cubes into frothy milk and stirred for a delicious drink.  And it was only place I saw a penguin, though admittedly a meringue and chocolate version, which went very well with the hot chocolate.

The lack of penguins was a major disappointment. Our boat trip on the Beagle Channel gave us a close up view of the southern sealions and imperial comorants native to these parts, but no penguins..  There is an island further down the channel that’s home to a colony of Magellan Penguins, we just chose the wrong boat.  And if you don’t look too closely at the pictures, the black and white cormorants could be mistaken for penguins…..  And we did have a close up view of Les Eclaireurs lighthouse.  I guess you can’t have it all.

And so our trip to the end of the world drew to a close.  We treated ourselves to our most expensive meal in Argentina at one of its best restaurants, Kaupe – king crab, scallops and sea bass like you’ve never seen in England and lemon ice cream with hot champagne sauce – and flew back to Buenos Aires.