Day 8 - Tierra del Fuego

Today we were picked up by Martin’s tour company at 8am.  Shout out to Tours by Design – they do travel and film logistics as well as regular tours, and in fact, they did logistics for the Leonardo Di Caprio film “The Revenant” a few years back.  Our tour today is to Tierra del Fuego National Park.  We were joined by two other couples – one from Italy and one from the Netherlands.  It’s nice to be an American because English is always the language of choice when there are multiple nationalities in the same group.

To get to the park, we took a train called the Train at the End of the World.  It is a huge tourist attraction and Camila’s father is the one who started it back in the 90’s, although we just learned that he recently sold it. 

Side note - a little history… in order to lay claim to Ushuaia, with its access to the Ocean for commerce, Argentina needed to get bodies there to settle the land.  They decided the best way to settle quickly was to set up a prison.  So, they shipped a bunch of prisoners there to build the prison as well as the town itself.  As part of this endeavor, they needed lumber from the forests and to get to the lumber, they had to build a train.  And the prisoners did all of this.  So… the train we took is about 7km that goes from town to the forest and is also known as the prisoner train.  The prison was active from the late 1800’s until the mid-1940’s.

The views from the train were both beautiful and sad as we learned the history and heard the stories of what the prisoners went through in the winter to build up the town.  There is an area called the tree graveyard where there are desiccated tree stumps to this day as far as the eye can see, and you can determine how high the snow was when the trees were cut down by how tall the stumps are. 

The train dropped us off in the park where we were picked up by our guide to continue our tour.

We visited several view points within the park.  I would be doing the area a disservice if I tried to recall (or spell) the names of the places we went – but they included several lakes and bays with views of Mountain ranges, which I think were the Andes and I think they were in Chile – across the bay.  Truth be told, I was a bit lulled by the van we were riding in and I think the trip caught up with me as I had a few drowsy moments and lost track of what we were doing.

When we made our stops to get out and walk, the “brisk” Ushuaian air was immediately reviving.  And by brisk, I mean that we’re now in 40’s & 50’s with alternating sun/clouds with a touch of rain and some wind.  Luckily, if it rains, the rain is quick and it can be sunny again within minutes.  One of the stops had a tiny little shack built onto a pier that had a post-office and they would stamp your passport with “El Fin del Mundo” (the slogan of Ushuaia – The End of the World).  Too bad we didn’t bring our passports but we did mail one postcard out!  The outside of the shack was covered in stickers and the inside was covered in currency from all of the international visitors who have been there.

On our tour, we also had a great discussion on native animals.  Almost no land animals are native to this part of Argentina except for the red fox and maybe one other llama-esque animal (don’t recall the name).  When the original settlers came, they introduced 25 pairs of beaver.  Beavers?  To start a fur trade, but it never took off and the beavers have overrun the area because there are no natural predators. They became a huge nuisance because they dam rivers, changing the ecosystem and killing forest; so, it is open season on beavers!  Then they introduced rabbits as a food source, but rabbits, apparently, breed like rabbits and also overran the place.  So they introduced a virus that only kills rabbits and now most of those are gone. 

After the tour, we stopped off for lunch at a cute little place where we once again ordered stuff we couldn’t pronounce but were rewarded with delicious sandwiches.  We both swear daily that we will make a bigger effort to learn Spanish.  At least as it pertains to food.  After lunch, we walked around town and took our obligatory photo in front of the Ushuaia sign, visited the Tierra del Fuego museum, and then carried our tired selves back to the room for a nap.

Around 8 o’clock, I said to Damon – it is almost 8 – are you ready to head out for dinner?  I think we are practically locals.  We found a restaurant that served the most amazing skirt steak – Damon was worried that we were eating dinner too early at 8:30 until he saw someone else with a hamburger, and then it was okay.  

A few other random tidbits – there are a steady stream of feral dogs roaming the streets.  Not a ton, but you see them.  What is interesting is that they are big!  In other countries, the strays have adapted and are usually non-descript and small.  Here, the dogs look to be about 50-70 lbs on average and they are more recognizable breeds.  Makes me sad and makes me wonder how they got there, but we also know that every local we’ve spoken to has, at least one dog and many people have more, so there are many that are well cared for.

4 Days and Counting.