Argentinian Patagonia – Tierra del Fuego
You’ve certainly heard the name Patagonia, and most likely seen the clothing brand too (expensive one, but for a great reason*). Patagonia is a geographic term that in Argentina denotes close to 50% of the country (north south- wise, see image below).
The name comes from Patagón, a word Ferdinand Magellan used to describe people that inhabited the area. Etimology is still shady, and there are a few theories of the origin of the word. The local people who at the time were taller than Europeans – were also thought of as giants.
As the seasons in southern hemisphere are inverted with respect to the north (autumn there, spring in Europe), I decided to start my journey all the way south to avoid the winter as much as possible, and chase the autumn all the way to the tropics of south America. I flew from Barcelona to what is arguably the southernmost city in the world – Ushuaia.
I heard of Ushuaia for the first time a long time ago while watching The Motorcycle Diaries. A movie about young Ernesto Che Guevara and his travel through South America. The soundtrack, made by famous Argentinian composer Gustavo Santaolalla, includes a composition that I listened to so many times over the years, and that made me wish to travel far away places, and especially to visit this barren part of the world.
Patagonia over Chile and Argentina
It’s quite a long trip to the southernmost city in the world
Arriving to a new place, so far away from everything familiar and with no familiar face always brings uncomfortable feelings: Why? Are you sure? What if you don’t meet anyone and you are alone for days and days? You can’t stand being alone with yourself that much, and that’s not pleasurable.
Luckily, that often turns out to be a short-term problem! At the airport, I met an Austrian girl called Sarah who was also looking for her way to the city, so we shared a taxi. We checked into our hostels and started exploring the city together.
Ushuaia is a port city on the Beagle Strait, on island called Big Island of the Land of Fire (Isla grande del Tierra del Fuego). The island got its name from natives that did not wear clothes and were almost exclusively keeping warm by the fire. Yes, even in the cold winter those tribes were barefoot and mostly naked. Many fires they were making on the coast were spotted by European explorers who then gave it the name the Land of Fire.
Cold winters were no reason to wear clothes for the indigenous population of Tierra del Fuego. The fires they made on the coast gave the name to the island – the Land of Fire.
Ushuaia is the most important town for departures to Antarctica, most of the ships pass through it or depart from it. What makes it interesting is the surroundings. Mountains tower high about the cold, almost arctic sea. The sea is full of life, with sea lions, penguins, Antarctic birds, whales and dolphins. Due to seasonal migrations, I didn’t manage to see penguins, but just penguin-looking birds like you can see in the videos below.
The beagle channel was once an enormous glacier. Towering above the mountains that are visible today, the glacier carved out the channel before it melted. It is hard to comprehend the amount of ice that once was where I was, the scale of such a glacier.
I don’t have the proper photo to show you the scale of former glacier, but I took this photo on an island more or less in the middle of the Beagle strait. Glacier was as twice as wide as the distance to the mountains visible in the distance, and apparently as high them.
It’s mostly Europeans that feed the tourism economy of Antarctica and Patagonia, so prices are high on everything tourist-related: rooms, restaurants and tours. I heard travellers talking about Patagonia as PataGUCCI due to the premium prices🥲. On cheaper side of tourism are beers, more than a few of them branding themselves the southernmost breweries in the world. I bought it, literally and figuratively, and my God – Argentinians really know how to make great beers! Even generic beers are better than in most European countries.
Over a few days Sarah and I explored different sites – we took a boat trip to see the maritime animals, hike to Laguna Esmeralda, did a disappointing hike to a non-existent glacier Moreno (the first one I did after breaking a bone in my foot, and good amount was in frozen and slippery terrain!), and then beautiful hike in Parque National Tierra del Fuego.
The views were just gorgeous. I don’t know if it’s a feeling of being so far away from home, in addition to the wilderness, but this is the second time I’ve been in Patagonia, and I just feel the same – excited, thankful, in peace and full of joy :-).
From animals that I managed to catch with my camera are sea lions, dolphins, humpback whales, and penguin-looking birds. Penguins left for warmer waters, and we were lucky to catch whales as it’s also the season when they migrate up north.
The southernmost Irish Pub gave me a good feeling of home, though the title of Irish pub is debatable as there was no Beamish, and Guinness was served in cans – blasphemous, I know. Chinese decorations inside also made it the strangest Irish pub I’ve seen. But It was friendly, smelling of beer, with sticky surfaces, chatty people, and lots of wood in the interior– so it’s an Irish pub in essence. Sarah made Rösti one of the evenings, so we had that as well – alpine home feels!
Travelling through Patagonia was wonderful too, with the sceneries changing colours due to autumn, white-capped mountains, low yellow grasslands, turquoise lakes…
But more on that in the next post, I’ll be heading north over Chile.
