Tierra del Fuego

Tierra del Fuego. Land at the end of the world. Land referred to as the ultimate human living place before the immense “White Continent”. Land that seemed unreachable to me a little more than a year ago, while I was still lost in the Far North.

Tierra del Fuego (“Land of Fire”). No, it is not for the temperature that this name has been assigned to this archipelago. But because Yagans (indigenous people) used to light fires on the coast like so many lights for boats on return from fishing in these regions often cloudy and rugged.

I reached the end of my trip in this area that I've been dreaming of discovering for such a long time. Thus I offered myself a treat. Stefan, a Swiss met on the trails of Torres del Paine, and I rented a mini-van (equipped for sleeping and cooking) to better explore the Greater Island of Tierra del Fuego for four days.

In Punta Arenas, we first crossed the Strait of Magellan (another mythical name in my imagination!). Then we started our trip anti-clockwise on the Chilean side: West, South, North, before to return to Punta Arenas. From there, I then took the bus to get to Ushuaia, in the Argentine Tierra del Fuego.

Distance with the mini-van: 1,285 km (800 mi)

Distance between Punta Arenas and Ushuaia: 625 km (390 mi)

The photos are going pretty well without comments. Landscapes: the colors of the autumnal forests were already mixing with snow capped peaks in the South of the island. And the vast prairies of the northern steppe provided a nice golden contrast with a particularly mild sky.

The Chilean side of Tierra del Fuego is a desert: some 7,000 inhabitants for an area the size of Belgium. But we met a few foxes, lots of ducks and geese, guanacos (not much smarter than their cousins the lamas), some rabbits and emus, and a colony of king penguins in Bahía Inutil (“Useless Bay”). I learned that the king penguin is a cousin of the emperor penguin. While the latter lives exclusively in Antarctica, the king penguin is smaller and inhabits sub-Antarctic territories: Tierra del Fuego and southern islands such as Kerguelen, Crozet and South Georgia.

A small anecdote peppered our journey to the land of adventures. Refueling on the island is not the easiest. But with a little planning and organization, it is usually fine ... except when the attendant reflexively put diesel instead of unleaded. More than an hour after refueling, the mini-van made its stubborn. Impossible to drive a meter further, this is when we realized the damage. In our misfortune, we still had the chance to be at this time on the shores of Lago Blanco, 100 meters from a club of amateur fishermen who helped us. And in the middle of this nowhere, to loose only 24 hours to repair and restart is to be doubly lucky.

Argentina occupies the eastern part of the Greater Island of Tierra del Fuego, where there are the two main cities of the archipelago: Rio Grande (65,000 inhabitants) on the Atlantic coast and Ushuaia (50,000 inhabitants) along the Beagle Channel. Ushuaia, which is pronounced u-sua-ya, has the distinction of being the only Argentine city geographically across the Andes and also the only one to bathe in the waters of the Pacific.

So here goes. Tuesday, April 9, 2013, at 6.10pm local time, I set foot in Ushuaia. I've reached my goal, at the end of the world, at the end of the road. Emotion and happiness to have met the challenge of connecting Fairbanks, Alaska, near the Arctic Circle, this city turned towards Antarctica. At that moment, I saw all these faces and all these landscapes, throughout 60,000 kilometers (37,300 mi), 19 countries, in 15 months. I would have liked all those who have supported me to be here at the end of the world. We would have had a toast and I could have thanked them/you once again.

Like me, you know that Ushuaia also means end of the trip. And of course, I'll be happy to be back home and meet family and friends. But let me enjoy for a few more days these southern lands, around Ushuaia (Argentina) and Puerto Williams (Chile). After that, I promise, I'm going home!