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.

Riding the Rails

Vintage train in Bad Doberan, Germany
Photo by Felix O.

 

By Heidi Noroozy

As a child, I had fantasies about living the life of a hobo, hopping on and off trains, traveling to wherever the rails led. As an adult, I realize I hadn’t considered the practicalities well enough to appreciate the downside of such a life: the lack of creature comforts and regular meals—the danger. But back then, it wasn’t the lifestyle that beckoned to me or even the sense of freedom and boundless horizons. I just loved trains.

One memorable rail-riding experience came when I was 11. That summer, my family and I spent some weeks in a small town called Tabarz in Thuringia, a forested region of gently rolling hills in East Germany. A network of hiking trails crisscrossed the landscape and led through the woods from one red-roofed village to the next. We’d spend long afternoons wandering those loamy trails, and when dusk fell, we’d return home by way of the Bimmelbahn, a narrow-gauge train that stopped at every tiny hamlet along its route. The train got its name from the little bell the engineer would ring on approaching a station. (Bimmeln means to ring a bell.) I could have ridden that little train all day long and never tired of listening to its cheerful chimes as it pulled into the next town. To this day, decades later, I can still conjure up the rich, piney scent of those woodsy trails and the ting-a-ling of the Bimmelbahn’s bell.

When I embark on a trip and need to choose a mode of transport, plane travel usually wins out for the sake of expediency. But if I had my druthers, I’d pick the rails every time. Most modern trains give a smooth and silent ride, but sometimes on a regional route, you can still find the old rattle-traps that are more like a historic steam engine than the high-tech, computerized machines of today. I love the way they go clickety clack down the line, slowly at first then faster and faster as they gather speed, until the world whizzes by to a staccato rhythm.

Hiking in the Thuringian Forest

Once, years ago, I had a bit of extra time and rode the rails straight across the United States, a journey that took three days. By the end of that trip, my mind was filled with images of wind rippling through golden wheat fields, green-flanked mountains reaching up to stroke the clouds, and the dramatic landscapes of the California’s Pacific coast, where waterfalls tumble down rocky cliffs and the sea carves blue coves out of the rugged shoreline. I gained a new appreciation for the varied landscapes of the country where I live.

I’ve had some fun times on trains. Once, on an overnight trip from Madrid to Algeciras at the southern tip of Spain, my two friends and I shared a compartment with three Spanish teenagers. The six of us played hand after hand of Crazy Eights throughout the long night. I understood no more than five or six words of Spanish at the beginning of the card game, which we took to calling “Ochos Locos,” but by dawn I could count to ten and rattle off the names of suits as though I’d been playing cards in Spanish for years.

Not every rail-riding experience has been quite so much fun. On a 1980 trip from Oslo to East Berlin, the train was late and I missed an evening connection somewhere in the middle of Denmark. The next train heading my way didn’t leave until six the next morning, so I settled in for a long night of strong coffee and a good book in the station’s tiny café. By the time we made it to the East German border, I discovered that, somewhere along the way, I’d lost the visa, stamped on a separate piece of paper, that I needed to enter the GDR. Possibly it had fallen out of my bag at that little café in Denmark.

GDR border crossing
Photo by Felix O.

Certain that I’d be unceremoniously tossed off the train and left behind in the no man’s land that existed between the two German states, I explained my situation to the East German border guard—hoping I didn’t look as nervous as I felt. But he just shrugged, told me to get a new visa as soon as I could, and moved on to the next passenger.

The shops, and therefore the travel agencies, were closed for the day when we reached Berlin, and the next day was Sunday. So I spent two nights as an illegal alien in the German Democratic Republic before getting my visa sorted out. No one seemed to care except me.

These days, I may have abandoned my over-romanticized image of the hobo’s life, but I still feel a thrill of excitement when I climb aboard a train. Sometimes it’s not the destination that matters but the thrill of the journey that gets you there.