The old prison is nowadays home to all municipal museums, covering such aspects as ship navigation in the area, flora and fauna, the discovery of Antarctica, the colonization of Tierra del Fuego and marine related art.
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! 🙂
Tags: park
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!
Tags: train
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!
Tags: other travellers
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!
Tags: watercraft