The Ends of the Earth

Take a Bargain Trip to Tierra del Fuego

By David Rich

The image of a land beyond which there is none, of Tierra del Fuego, has fascinated me ever since my schoolboy geography days. Finally I went, driving for four months from Ecuador and arriving in time for Christmas and New Years.

The Island of Tierra del Fuego is the size of Ireland, the last outpost of civilization before arrival in Antarctica. To the east rages the wild Atlantic, to the west and north the comparatively tranquil Straits of Magellan, and to the south the Beagle Channel and Cape Horn, where the most outrageous storms in the world collide. The island is easily divided in simple fourths: the west Chile and the east Argentina, the north—windswept with dots of oil derricks, bogs, and sheep—in both Chile and Argentina, the south crammed with jagged snow-capped mountains, glaciers, a fabulous national park, and the world’s southernmost city of Ushuaia. The southeast quadrant in Argentina reputedly offers the best trout fishing on the planet around Tierra del Fuego’s largest city, Rio Grande, plus a very special bakery in the little town of Tolhuin.

The history of the fiery land is heartbreak and violent death. The four original indigenous groups were purposefully slaughtered by Europeans to add to their empires. Less than ten indigenous people survive from the Selk’nam tribe or any tribe. I bought two pounds of king crab from a weather-beaten and stoic Selk’nam survivor, when the ferry from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales anchored for an hour at Puerto Eden.

Read more at Transitions Abroad.