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. 

To the end of the world!

Ushuaia is billed as the southernmost city in the world, and that’s where we are heading.  El fin del mondo.  But first we have to get there.  By bus.  It takes a day and half.  The end of the world is a long, long way away.

It’s a funny thing about Argentina – and indeed the small bit of Chile that we visit. Apart from the Andes, which are very steep and dramatic, much of the land is almost completely flat. We seem to have flown over thousands of miles of flatness and now we are driving through hundreds more miles of flatness – and it’s not very interesting.  The land is beigey-grey.  The plants are beigey-grey.  The sheep are beigey-grey.  But the guanacos are browny-grey. We don’t see many guanacos. Thank God for Kindles and iPads.

 Our epic journey involves two buses, an overnight stop in Punta Arenas where we find a very jolly fish restaurant – La Luna – a third bus which eventually takes us on a boat across the “mystical”, hmmm, Strait of Magellan to the island of Tierra del Fuego and then across the border back into Argentina and onto Rio Grande, which boasts the biggest brown trout in the world.  But we don’t stop there.  We board a mini-bus which, two hours later, disgorges us on the seafront in Ushuaia in a square dedicated to Las Malvinas.  We are just 484 miles from the Falkland Islands and Argentina’s claim is clear. Las Malvinas are included in the Province of Tierra del Fuego, and the UK has illegally occupied the islands since 1833. But no-one seems to hold this against us.

This isn’t the only contentious border in these parts. Chile/Argentina is clearly divided by the Andes peaks right down the country, then suddenly a slip of the hand and the border blips out to the east, Chile does a quick land grab for the final few miles of mainland and half of Tierra del Fuego as well as all the little islands scattered down the west coast.  The two countries still squabble over several of these islands and they had to get the Pope to sort it out a few years ago.  He sided with Chile, but I doubt that it’s sorted for ever.  You can’t reach the Argentine section of Tierra del Fuego by road unless you go through Chile.  Which could be why it’s the most relaxed border we encounter.  No checks for illegal fruit here. Everyone on the bus gives their passports to the bus conductor, who takes them in to be cloned – sorry, stamped - at both border controls and we’re through.  

And then there’s Antarctica.  Silly me.  I thought it was protected by international treaty and no-one owned it.  Try telling that to Argentina. With Antarctica only being 600 or so miles away they naturally claim a slice of it, and once again include Argentine Antarctic Territory in the Province of Tierra del Fuego.

So what is it like, this city at the end of the world?  I often find that places I have pictured in my mind based on their romantic name are nothing like the expectation.  The town itself is an eclectic mix – part naval base, part cruise liner port (mainly heading to Antarctica) and because of that, part tacky tourist town; there is not one, but three casinos here.  But the steepness of the streets tumbling down to the sea rival those of San Francisco, and some of the buildings are brightly coloured and attractive, though just as many are ugly concrete.  My real problem is that it doesn’t feel like the end of the world.  I look out to sea and can see land. We are actually looking over the Beagle Channel and there are several islands between here and Cape Horn and open sea.  That’s where the drama is to be had.  Where the Pacific meets the Atlantic and the cruise liners brave waves 20m high to cross Drake’s Passage to Antarctica.

Here in Ushuaia it is high summer; it is a little chilly, but all is calm.  And there are lupins. And a rugby club. And a golf course, with 8 holes.  Who’d have thought of that?