The Land of Fire

Waiting at the Strait of Magellan

By Alli Sinclair

I come from one of the world’s largest islands, so it’s only natural I’m a sucker for land poking out of vast oceans. Fortunately, near Australia, we have a fabulous selection of islands with palm trees, pristine beaches, and turquoise waters -- Fiji, Samoa, Tahiti, Vanuatu... the list goes on! But one of my favourite islands in the world doesn’t have a palm tree in sight but it does have penguins and is known as the Land of Fire – it’s Tierra del Fuego in southern Argentina.

My first visit to Tierra del Fuego was after I’d cycled and ridden buses for thousands of kilometres through Patagonia. I’d been on a roll, enjoying the life of a traveller, only to end up stranded at the southern tip of Argentina, staring across the Strait of Magellen. Due to unpredictable wind and ever-changing currents, ferry crossings are commonly stopped until weather improves and my ferry was no different. Six hours later we crossed by boat, where humpback whales swam in the channel that flows between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Once on the other side, I jumped on a bus and travelled through windswept plains where crops of mountains jutted skyward. Arriving at Ushuaia, the stepping off point for ships sailing to Antarctica, I found a hostel on the hillside with views across the Beagle Channel. Not bad for US$10 a night.

The western region of Tierra del Fuego and most surrounding islands are owned by Chile while the remainder of the island is owned by Argentina. Now, depending on who you’re speaking to, you’ll get different stories about the most southern city in the world. Argentines will swear it’s Ushuaia, and Chileans will argue it’s Puerto Williams.

Tierra del Fuego National Park lies only 11 kilometres from Ushuaia, is the first shoreline national park established in Argentina, and it is the world’s most southern national park. It’s easy to access by bike, car, or, probably the most popular option, by train.

The Train to the End of the World is a narrow gauge railway that was originally established in 1910 after the prison in Ushuaia began operating. The steam train travelled along along the waterfront in Ushuaia, then across the eastern slope of Mount Susana and into what we now call Tierra de Fuego National Park. The railway originally connected the prison to the forestry camp within the park, and was known as the Prison Train until the prison closed in 1947. (The original railway closed in 1952 after an earthquake damaged the tracks. Luckily, some train lovers reconstructed and renovated the tracks in 1994. After purchasing a steam locomotive from England, building one in Argentina, and assembling three diesel locomotives, they opened the line to tourism). Now it’s possible to take the train from the outskirts of Ushuaia and travel for 50 minutes along the heritage railway to the Tierra del Fuego National Park.

Once there, you can visit waterfalls, thick forests, pristine lakes, and towering mountains that all combine to make a visit to this park an unforgettable experience. For those who love to hike, it’s easy to spend a few days traipsing the trails, enjoying the wildlife both on and above the ground. If you have a keen eye, you’re likely to spot an Andean Fox, North American Beaver, European Rabbit, muskrat, and guanacos. Looking above, you may spot an Austral Parakeet, Magellanic and Blackish Oystercatchers, as well as the elusive Andean Condor.

As for time of year, from personal experience, I’d say Autumn (Fall) is the most spectacular season to go. Crisp, sunny days, bright blue skies, and fewer tourists means you almost have the park to yourself. And as for scenery, nothing can beat the magnificent orange, red, and yellow leaves of trees clinging to the rolling hills and jutting mountains.

Enjoying champagne and Oreos at the end of the world

And if visiting the southernmost national park in the world then you can add standing at the end of the Pan-American Highway, an impressive roads that stretches for 29,800 miles from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to Ushuaia, Argentina.

Tierra del Fuego is shrouded in mystery, has a colourful history, and breathtaking scenery and nature. It’s easy to spend a week, even two, exploring the surrounds and if you’ve been saving your pennies, sail to Antarctica. For me, the Land of Fire burns brightly in my heart and I can’t wait to take my young family there and share the wonderful experiences waiting for us to embrace.

If you want to learn more about Ushuaia, you can visit another post I wrote here.

In Patagonia – Bruce Chatwin

My first journey around the world started in a second-hand bookshop in my hometown in Australia. Whenever I shop in a bookstore, I let my gut guide me, and that particular day I was drawn to the travel section where I picked up a copy of In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin. I had a feeling I was in for a unique journey to a fascinating land. I was right.

First published in 1977, In Patagonia was Chatwin’s first foray into book-length travel writing, and since then, this book has been hailed as the tome that changed travel writing forever. Chatwin’s easy writing style and colourful descriptions of people and places draw the reader into a world that is easily imagined, but also unfamiliar.

The story starts with a young Chatwin sitting in his grandmother’s dining room in England. He comes across some cardboard and attached to it is a piece of thick and leathery skin sprouting strands of coarse, reddish hair. The specimen had been sent from his grandmother’s cousin, Captain Charley Milward after his ship had come to grief in the Strait of Magellan, in South America. Chatwin learns that Milward had settled in Punta Arenas, Chile, and later had discovered a brontosaurus sticking out of the ice. Milward jointed, salted, and packed the dinosaur in barrels and sent it to the Natural History Museum of South Kensington, England. By the time it arrived it was a putrefied disaster, but Milward had saved a piece prior to shipping and sent it to Chatwin’s grandmother.

As a child, Chatwin coveted the piece of skin, even after his schoolmates and science teacher laughed and told him it couldn’t be a brontosaurus as they didn’t have hair. After his grandmother passed away, Chatwin asked for the skin she’d promised him, only to find out from his mother that it had been thrown away. It wasn’t until years later that Chatwin discovered the real story behind the skin – Milward had indeed found an animal, but it was a mylodon (Giant Sloth). His discovery wasn’t a complete specimen, let alone a whole skeleton, but only some skin that had been preserved in the cold caves in Chilean Patagonia. Undeterred by facts intruding upon his childhood dreams, Chatwin’s love of geography grew and his desire to travel to remote corners of the world ensued.

With an array of failed university courses and jobs behind him, Chatwin eventually took a job at The Times. During an interview with aging designer Eileen Gray, he commented on a map of Patagonia she had on the wall. He mentioned he’d always wanted to visit, so when Gray said “Go there for me” he sent a telegram to his editor with the words, “Gone to Patagonia for six months.” And he went.

The book was written in the 1970s when the world focussed on bombs and the Cold War, and at the time, it occurred to Chatwin the remoteness of Patagonia could be an excellent place to flee from the fallout. 

Torres del Paine, Patagonia

“We fixed on Patagonia as the safest place on earth.  I pictured a low timber house with a shingled roof, caulked against storms, with blazing log fires inside and the walls lined with the best books, somewhere to live when the rest of the world blew up.” 

What Chatwin discovers on his journey is Patagonia is the place where people from all over the world have sought refuge from their homelands. The Welsh and Italians, for example, present countless opportunities for Chatwin to discover the difficulties of reinventing one’s self far from friends and family. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid play a large role in this book as Chatwin covers their history, both supposed and factual, as well as discovering Captain Milward’s own memoirs of his seafaring days. 

Chatwin lets people’s actions speak for themselves, like when he meets Grandpa Felipe, the last member of the Yaghan people on Navarino Island. The old gentleman talks about how their people have lost their language to compulsory English education and how many of their people have died through epidemics. At times, the book is heartbreaking, yet a few pages later, the reader is smiling over Chatwin’s description of a heart-warming experience.

Exile and wandering are the prominent themes in this book and Chatwin’s investigations into Pascal’s Theorem of whether man is essentially nomadic and a settled civilization is unnatural brings up some very interesting topics for discussion.

Photo by The Guardian

In Patagonia received the Hawthornden Prize and the E.M. Forster awards which launched Chatwin’s career as a travel writer. Bruce Chatwin went on to write eight other books, but most were published posthumously after his death in 1989. The world lost a fascinating writer back then, but his legacy appears to have lived on in the works of other travel writers.

I could start my own public library based on the travel books I own. I love delving into the minds of people as they travel to exotic lands and undertake adventures that would give most people heart failure. Unfortunately, not all travel books are the same, and I’ve read a few that have disappointed me greatly with their lack of compassion or inability to truly understand the cultures and lands the writers have travelled through. This is not the case with Chatwin’s writing. 

Even after living in other countries and immersing myself in unfamiliar cultures, I still don’t think one can fully understand what it’s like to be born and bred in a particular country, other than the one we grew up in. That’s why some travel books miss the mark, causing the reader to walk away without a better understanding of the place they just travelled to between the covers of the book. But there are some writers who seamlessly peel back the layers of a culture and manage to give the reader a snippet into what someone else’s life is like, and for me, Bruce Chatwin is a master.

To the Ends of the Earth

Alli in the National Park of Tierra del Fuego

My first encounter with Tierra del Fuego (the Land of Fire) was through Bruce Chatwin’s book, In Patagonia. His words created images of far flung settlements struggling in sparse, windswept landscapes. His ability to weave the passion of the people and the harshness of the terrain were enough to make me want to undertake my own Patagonian adventure.

For years, I’d dreamt about travelling to the Land of Fire, and in particular, Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world (although, the Chileans dispute this—don’t get them started). Located on the icy shores of the Beagle Channel and surrounded by the Martial chain of mountains, Ushuaia could easily be mistaken as a seaside town in Scandinavia. Now used as a stepping-off point for boat trips to Antarctica, Ushuaia has a rich, and at times, seedy history. A visit to Presidio, the city’s old prison, will set one straight.

In 1902, Ushuaia was designated as a place to lodge re-offenders. Its remote location and inhospitable environment meant anyone crazy enough to escape would perish in the cold and harsh elements. Prisoners were indentured to build a jail and by the time they finished in 1920, the prison housed murderers, thieves, political prisoners, and military deserters. Originally designed to inter 380 prisoners in single cells, the jail housed 800 men.

Walking through the cold, echoing passages, it’s not hard to imagine the suffering and dog-eat-dog behavior that once ruled these halls. But all wasn’t lost on those willing to make good. Prisoners with a proven record of good behavior received the chance to earn wages and work inside the workshops or even outside the jail. They undertook trades the community desperately needed—printers, cobblers, carpenters, bakers, and pharmacists among them. Because of these services, the residents of Ushuaia didn’t have to rely so heavily on the ships arriving once a month to deliver goods. Thanks to the skills of the inmates, Ushuaia grew into a flourishing, self-sufficient community.

The prison closed in 1947 but visitors can relive life there through the small, but fascinating museums that fill Ushuaia. The Museo de Presidio, also houses the Museo Maritimo (Maritime Museum) and the Antarctic Museum. The central hall of the prison is hired out as a function and lecture room and, from there, the cells sprout off like a spinning wheel. Many of the small rooms contain keepsakes from past prisoners. Pabellón 4 (Pavilion 4) delves into Tierra del Fuego’s history, including the history of Ferdinand Magellan, the Portuguese explorer who sailed for the Spanish Crown and discovered this island in 1520. 

The second floor of Pavilion 4 hosts the Antarctic Museum. It displays tools used by polar expeditions and biological materials, including a comprehensive history of expeditions to Antarctica. There are incredibly detailed models of famous ships, built to scale, providing a glimpse into the region’s history. The most appealing part of the museum, to me, is the willingness of the curators to not only celebrate history, but use it to build on present and future explorations of the snowy continent.

And if you can’t get enough history, then the Museo del Fin del Mundo (Museum of the End of the World) might help in that department. The stately building was once a local branch of the Banco de la Nación Argentina (National Bank of Argentina) and played an important role in the settler’s success in this remote part of the world. The displays represent aboriginal groups, along with the story of how Tierra del Fuego got its name. Turns out, when Magellan first sailed into the strait, he spotted fires burning along the shores. The flames belonged to the Yaghan people, so Magellan and his men originally christened the island as the Land of Smoke, later changing it to the Land of Fire.

The library holds more than 3,400 tomes devoted to history and sciences, such as anthropology. But it’s the Colección Reservada that gets book geeks like me all excited. Tucked away in a vault is a collection of original books written by scientists, explorers and influential people between the 16^th and 19^th centuries. At the time I visited, this vault was off limits to tourists, and I’ve been unable to find out if it’s available for viewing today. But just the thought of it for me feels like a little piece of heaven. I can imagine my nose twitching from the mold, spines of books snapping as they’re opened, and pages crinkling as I gently turned them with white cotton gloved hands. 

The Land of Fire offers a lot more than museums though. It’s been the subject of many novels, including the lighthouse on the Isla de los Estados (Island of the States) which inspired Jules Verne to write The Lighthouse at the End of the World. A week in Ushuaia is barely enough to take in the museums, hiking, skiing, boating, estancias (ranches), penguins, and Train to the End of the World. And let’s not forget the Irish Pub. (Come on, did you really think I’d neglect to mention such an important attraction?)

It’s easy to spend hours strolling up the hills and gazing out over the Beagle Channel. With Antarctica as a neighbor, Ushuaia is a city steeped in history and frontier culture.