Tierra del Fuego national park

We spent half a day in this park. Since now it’s winter down there, not many tourists were present and everything was very quiet. Only a hungry fox disturbed us during the visit! 🙂947 park948 park949 park950 park951 park952 park953 park954 park955 park

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The end of the world train

The area around nowadays Ushuaia was colonized during late 19th century, in order to assure Argentinian sovereignty over the newly acquired land. At the beginning it was just a small penal colony, that grew together with the town. From the beginning there was some rail transporting systems implemented that allowed prisoners to bring wood from the nearby forest to be used for construction and heating.

After the penitentiary was decommissioned, in 1947, the 25km long railway was left to rust. Around 1990, when authorities, in response to the growing number of tourists, decided to restore the system, not much was left (one loco and one passenger car were preserved and are now on display at the local museum). So they decided to build the End of the World Train (El tren del fin del mundo) that is today moving tourists along the last 7km of the original railway. The ride lasts for about 45 minutes each way. The views are terrific: only the landscape from Disneyland is anywhere close to the one we saw during the ride, the ponds, creeks, wild horses and snow covered mountains competing to create such an impression!

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More adventure travellers encountered

As I said earlier, Ushuaia is a checkpoint for many tourists visiting South America. We ran into Nick, from NYC, who is now biking his way North towards Bolivia, and Akis and Vula, from Greece, who are now at the end of a 3 (THREE!!!) years worldwide journey aboard their Land Rover Disco3 (and as a coincidence, Akis used to race his bike at Serres, same place where I learned racing). Their blogs here and here. Looks like everybody we encounter is enjoying a continuous vacation! Have fun, guys!937 travel938 travel

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Tierra del Fuego

The last 1500km were VERY boring. A lonely freeway and the endless pampas. Nothing else.

Since this route is very popular among bikers and other adventure travelers, on every gas station, restaurant or hotel there is one (or more) window(s) reserved for stickers. I forgot to print stickers, so I guess we’ll have to come back later to affix some 🙂

After spending one night in Rio Gallegos we crossed the border to Chile. From there we took the ferry over the Magellan strait and we stepped on Tierra del Fuego. Nothing new: more pampas! After some 200km we crossed again to Argentina (and we spent one more night there, in the customs building) and the landscape began to change: mountains, lakes and forests. At sunset we were finally in Ushuaia, the world’s Southern most city in the world, on 9th of May 2010, after 109 days and 22.500km!

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La Trochita

La Trochita (or The Old Patagonian Express) is the name of a 402km long railway system running from Esquel to Ingeniero Jacobacci in Patagonia, Argentina. It was constructed between 1916 and 1934 with the purpose of helping farming and towns in that area.

Although the entire length of track is still usable, the tourist train runs nowadays only from Esquel to Nahuel Pan (20km). They still use two of the original 2-8-2 Baldwin locomotives (while two other Henschels are stored for future repairs) and original 1st and 2nd class coaches. The century-old freight cars are used today only for maintenance purposes.

The trip lasted for about one hour, after which the locomotive was reversed and we came back to Esquel. During the return trip I decided to ride on top of one car in order to get a better camera angle. Somehow the conductor found out and he came very worried and agitated demanding me to ride inside. I managed to calm him down by explaining that I am a circus acrobat with more than twelve years of experience, but still he didn’t allow me to carry on 🙂

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