January 30, 2023
Tierra del Fuego is an archipelago at South America’s southernmost tip, shared by Chile and Argentina. Known for its dramatic landscapes of snow mountains, glaciers and tundra, its main island is home to our port for the day located in the town of Ushuaia. Often referred to as “The End of the World,” Ushuaia is a gateway to Tierra del Fuego and Antarctica to the south, 600 miles away.
Our rough ride through Drake Passage forced the captain to reduce his speed for the duration of the Passage, delaying our arrival to the port by a full three hours, but the guides made sure no one missed a minute of the planned adventure! Below was our first glimpse of the area.
Our day began on an enclosed catamaran that took us across the Beagle Channel (named for the vessel that carried Charles Darwin across these same waters) to Lapataia Bay, where we boarded a bus that took us along the famed Pan American Highway, through the Tierra del Fuego National Park to the Tierra del Fuego Southern Railway.
Ken got some fantastic pictures of the the birds that accompanied us on our journey. Albatross have the largest known wing spans of any living bird, sometimes reaching as wide as 12 feet. They are particularly unique in that they may go a full two years without ever touching land. They land on and sleep on the water, returning to dry land only to mate.
Along the way we passed Seal Island, Island of the Birds, home to a colony of Cormorants, and Les Eclaireurs Lighthouse. The Lighthouse has been continuously operational since 1920, and is unmanned. It’s solar-powered light is on an automated system.
The Pan American Highway was originally supposed to be a railroad connecting one tip of the Americas to the other, but construction was never begun and then Panama gained independence and began focusing on its canal and the next thing ya know 40 years have passed since the railway was originally proposed and now the auto is king. The railway became a highway. This roadway stretched across the Americas and covers approximately 19,000 miles in length. According to Guinness, The Pan American Highway is the world’s longest “motorable road,” It stretches from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to Ushuaia, Argentina.
The town of Ushuaia began life as a penal colony, and the Train at the End of the World is a steam railway originally built to transport timber for the prison at Ushuaia. In an effort to stake their claim to this region of Tierra del Fuego the Argentine government authorized the construction of a large military-run prison and the infrastructure to support it. Prisoners would be loaded onto the train every morning, taken into the remote forest to cut down trees, then ride back on top of the lumber they had cut. The tour describes a pretty hard life for these guys, who were responsible for building their own facilities and the town infrastructure, and compares the prison facilities to Alcatraz or Devil’s Island.
There are wild horses in the area.
This area is known as the “Dead Forest.” It is an area where prisoners cut trees and is allowed to remain unplanted as a nod to the area’s history.
JodockWorldTravel 