Tierra del Fuego means land of fire. The name Tierra del Fuego was given by the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan while sailing for the Spanish Crown  in 1520. The reason he gave it this name is because the indigenous people (the  Yaghan) that lived there built lots of fires to keep themselves warm. It rains a lot in Patagonia and so rather than wear clothes that would have been wet or damp all the time, they just covered their bodies in animal grease (hmmm 🤔 I bet that smelled good 😆) and stayed near fires to keep warm.

We took a 3.5 hour flight from Santiago to Punta Arenas, Chile in the south of Patagonia. We stayed in a hostel there for a few days and explored the town. It’s a port town and isn’t quite as touristy as some of the other towns in Patagonia. Here are some pictures:

We spent a few days in Punta Arenas. It wasn’t all that exciting, but making our travel plans takes a lot of time. Time to research where we want to go and what we want to do, and then more time to find places to stay, bus tickets, etc. So sometimes we end up spending time just hanging out in a town and figuring out what to do next. While we were in Punta Arenas we decided to go to Ushuaia, Argentina. So I booked bus tickets and an airbnb for a week and we took off! The bus trip was long (11 hours) but we like taking buses because they’re cheap and you don’t have to worry about getting lost. Plus, being retired means that you have the luxury of time in your favor.

We got to Ushuaia at about 8:00pm and got a taxi to our airbnb. The host of the airbnb was so sweet! Her name is Gloria and she had a cute little apartment and had supplied it with things like coffee, sugar, salt, oil, vinegar and spices. We love it when places do that because then we don’t have to buy them and end up leaving them there because we don’t have room in our backpacks to take all that stuff with us. We cook a fair amount (mostly things like beans, vegetarian spaghetti and soups) at our airbnbs so that we can save money. We make vegetarian style meals because we’re a little wary of the meat down here. We have been to lots of markets that stink really bad near the meat counter and it makes us nervous! Our airbnb host was so sweet that she showed us around the town in her car the next day. She took us up to see the Martial Glacier and also to a beach where all the locals go on warm weekends. The beach area was so packed because it was a super nice day and they don’t get those very often. The weather in Patagonia is very unpredictable and is usually windy in spring and summer. We got so lucky while we were in Ushuaia. They told us that they get fewer than 10 days per year that are sunny, warm and not windy. We were fortunate enough to experience about 5 of them!

Here are some pics from our bus ride to Ushuaia:

The town of Ushuaia is a launching point for lots of cool treks and fun stuff to do. Here are some pictures from the town:

There was a whole shrine/memorial next to the water in Ushuaia. It was dedicated to the men who fought in the conflict that Argentina had with Britain over the Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas in 1982. I sort of remembered it, but not really. So I read about it in Wikipedia. It says that the islands had been a territory of Britain since the early 1800s and that Argentina had long been claiming the islands (Islas Malvinas, as they call them) as part of their country. So the military dictatorship in Argentina decided to invade the islands on April 2, 1982. Almost 1,000 people were killed in the conflict. Over 300 of them died when Britain sank an Argentinian ship. After 74 days Argentina surrendered. We talked to a few Argentinians and they still seem to feel like the islands should be theirs. They say that they still are not allowed to travel to the islands. It was interesting to hear our young tour guide discussing it with a British traveler on the hike! They did a very good job at discussing it without getting personal.

We went on a couple of tours while we were in Ushuaia. The first was a 4×4 off-road tour of Fagnano Lake. It was so beautiful and lots of fun. We went with an energetic Chileno tour guide named Ignacio and our fellow passengers were from Israel and Italy. One of the best things about the trip was the lunch! They served us these yummy sandwiches called Choripan, which is a grilled chorizo (sausage) served on bread (pan). Choripanes are commonly served as an appetizer during the preparation of an asado (an Argentinian cookout). Then they served us an Argentinian ribeye steak that was soooo yummy! It’s kinda funny that we have tried steak in restaurants in Peru and Ecuador and they were awful! Our theory is that they don’t age their beef. Some of the expats we met in Ecuador told us they buy steak and then age it in their own fridge for about 2 weeks before they eat it and that it tastes much better that way. Anyway, the Argentinian steak was awesome! And they served it with a nice Argentinian Malbec that made it even better. Yummmmm.

One thing we learned on our lake tour was about an invasive species that’s causing lots of problems in Tierra del Fuego. It’s the North American beaver! Evidently, back in the 1940s some dummy thought it would be a good idea to introduce the North American beaver to the island of
Tierra del Fuego in hopes of starting a fur trade there. So they brought about 50 beavers there. But the beavers don’t have a natural predator in TdF, so they have multiplied out of control. Now there are over 100,000 beavers there! It’s a horrible problem because they dam up so many creeks and rivers and they cause the water to rise and kill huge amounts of the native Lenga (beech) trees there. It has devastated lots of forests. Trees grow extremely slowly there because the area is covered by snow for most of the year. Here’s a really good article about the problem from National Geographic:

https://tinyurl.com/y4qaw467

After the lake trip we did a tour where we hiked and rafted in the Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego. Our guide was great. He hunts beavers (and eats them) when he’s not doing tours. Also, in the winter he leads ski mountaineering trips. I guess it’s a relatively new (and super dangerous!) sport where you climb mountains either on skis or carrying them (depending on how steep the mountain is) and then ski back down. Skiing is a big thing in Ushuaia because it snows pretty much every day so there’s almost always powder on the ski slopes.

On our last day in Ushuaia we hiked up part of the way to a glacier that is only right outside the town. It was super hard to walk up because it was so steep! I’m trying to get better at these hikes, but my asthmatic lungs make it really tough. We didn’t make it all the way up to the glacier, but we did get up far enough for a really beautiful view of the town of Ushuaia!

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My next post is going to be about our trip to “Fin del Mundo” – – the end of the world! We flew from Punta Arenas to a small town named Puerto Williams. It is the southernmost town in the world! We flew down there and then took a ferry back up, which turned out to be a bit of an adventure 😆. I’ll write about it soon!