Journey to the End of the Earth

Tierra del Fuego has intrigued me since I first learned of it in a grade school geography class. Located at the southernmost tip of South America, the archipelago is the final destination for the Pan American Highway, a network of roads from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to Ushuaia, Argentina. Just beyond it, in the turbulent waters where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans meet, is the infamous Cape Horn, the historical site of countless shipwrecks. A book about the history of the region calls Tierra del Fuego the “uttermost part of the earth.”

In December 2008, after nearly a year of studying maps and travel guides, exploring the Internet, and corresponding with hotel managers and booking agents, I made a solo journey to the end of the earth. The first leg of my 12-day trip was an overnight flight to sunny Santiago, Chile, where I took a bus downtown for some sightseeing before crashing for the night at the new Santiago Airport Holiday Inn across the street from the airport. The next morning, I boarded an LAN flight for Ushuaia, Argentina.

I spent most of the trip with my face pressed up against the window, as the flight provided jaw-dropping views of the Andes, the world’s longest mountain range, and Patagonia, the remote region of southern Argentina and Chile known for its scenic islands, glaciers, fjords, lakes, and mountains. I was almost there. Would 12 days be enough?

Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world
At 55 degrees latitude south, Ushuaia (pronounced oo-swy-ah) is the southernmost city in the world. A former penal colony with a population of about 65,000 (about the size of St. Cloud), Ushuaia is a hilly, bustling port town, part weather-beaten fishing village and part international launching point for expeditions to Antarctica and trips around Cape Horn. Encircled by a range of rugged mountain peaks, it faces the Beagle Channel, the strait separating the islands of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago.

When I arrived at the Ushuaia airport from Santiago, I couldn’t find a working ATM to get Argentine pesos before taking a taxi to my hotel. Equipped with Chilean currency, U.S. currency, a credit card, and a debit card, I took a cab from the airport to the Posada Fueguina, my hotel on a hill above downtown Ushuaia. The driver was friendly and welcoming, pointing out several landmarks on the way. When it came time to pay the fare and I learned that the driver didn’t take plastic, I confessed that I didn’t have any Argentine pesos and offered him his choice of Chilean pesos or American dollars. He preferred American dollars, but I then discovered that I had only $20 bills and six dollars – and the fare was $7. Thinking the ride from the airport had been well worth it, I offered him $20, but he wouldn’t take it. He took the six dollars instead – with a smile and warm wishes for a good trip. It was the first of several pleasant experiences I had with the local people.

Later that day, I searched the downtown area for an ATM. It was Sunday, and the banks were closed, but a visitors’ map indicated that an ATM was available on San Martin, Ushuaia’s main downtown street. I just couldn’t find it, so I pulled out my Spanish phrase book and went into a tiny shop to ask about “el cajero automatico.” Apparently, I looked very confused: The shopkeeper actually locked up her store to escort me a few doors down the street, where the ATM had its own little door between two shops.

Most things in Ushauaia are within walking distance, but the hills provide a strenuous workout. (Some of the city’s sidewalks are so steep they have stairs.) By my second day in Ushuaia, I had a rental car, which provided me with new adventures in driving the hilly, bustling streets of the town with a stick shift and allowed me to travel to nearby Tierra del Fuego National Park and Martial Glacier.

In Tierra del Fuego National Park, I stood at the end of the Pan American Highway, saw everything from mountain peaks and rivers to swamps and beaver dams, and inhaled what may be the cleanest air on earth. In the mountain range above Ushuaia, I took a ski lift to Martial Glacier, a snow-covered mountain that is an important source of drinking water for the city.

Voyage to the legendary Cape Horn and Strait of Magellan
Southern Patagonia’s unusual topography, which is made up of hundreds of islands, makes water travel the best way to explore it. On my last day in Ushuaia, I boarded the M/V Mare Australis, a 64-cabin expedition cruise ship, for a wonderful three-day journey to Cape Horn and the Strait of Magellan. My fellow travelers on the 520-nautical-mile voyage were a mini-United Nations, with 14 countries represented by some 90 people.

Sailing away from Ushuaia through the Beagle Channel, we approached the Drake Passage, the turbulent body of water that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans between South America and Antarctica. The next morning, we sighted the iconic Cape Horn, the historical site of many shipwrecks and the final resting place of countless sailors. The last headland before Antarctica, Cape Horn remains a maritime legend to this day, as sailing around this remote point was (and is) one of the most challenging nautical routes on the planet.

When we got word from the ship’s captain that weather conditions would permit us to land, we donned our life jackets and boarded Zodiacs (motorized inflatable boats) in groups of 12-15 people for the trip to Cape Horn island.

After landing on the island, we climbed 160 wooden steps up a sheer, 1,394-foot-high rocky outcrop, then trekked in gale-force winds along a boardwalk to the Cape Horn Memorial, which was inaugurated in 1992 in memory of “the sailors lost rounding Cape Horn from all the seas of the world.” A second boardwalk led to the island’s lighthouse and chapel.

Other Zodiac excursions took us to see Piloto glacier ― which is receding due to global warming ― and Magdelena Island, one of the continent’s largest penguin sanctuaries. The 210-acre island is home to an estimated 69,000 pairs of Magellanic penguins, a medium-sized species of penguin found only along the coasts of Chile and Argentina. Cormorants, seagulls, and seals also share the habitat. Visitors walk along a roped-off path leading to a lighthouse, ranger station, and information center. Every step of the way, thousands of penguins can be seen and heard. They seem completely unfazed by their human visitors, as if they know they outnumber us by 150 to 1 and that we will soon be gone.

Torres del Paine: remote and breathtakingly scenic
The Mare Australis cruise ended in Punta Arenas, a lively city of about 110,000 on the Strait of Magellan, where I rented a car for the five-hour drive to Torres del Paine National Park.

This remote national park, where granite peaks and towers soar from sea level to 9,000 feet, has some of the most breathtaking mountain scenery in all of South America. Although it sits next to the Andes mountain range, Torres del Paine (pronounced “pie-nay,” the old Tehuelche word for “blue”) is a separate geologic formation created about 12 million years ago, when lava forced its way up through the thick sedimentary crust that covered the southwestern coast of South America and cooled to form a granite mass. Glaciers then pushed through the region, sculpting two of the world’s most stunningly beautiful natural phenomena: the cuernos (horns) formation and the torres (towers), a row of ash-gray spires. In 1978, the park was declared a World Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO.

The park’s rough, unpaved roads forced me to drive slowly – and that’s a good thing, because in addition to breathtaking vistas, wildlife was often around the next bend. I often saw guanacos―a woollier version of the llama, which live in herds―and rheas, large, flightless birds similar to ostriches.

It was in Torres del Paine National Park that I had another telling experience with the local people. My rental car had begun overheating on the five-hour drive to the park from Punta Arenas. The highway was under construction, and when I stopped at the side of the road, a group of workers had come to my aid, gathering around the car and running to get water to add to the radiator. I had hoped the problem was resolved, but the next day, a red light began flashing on the indicator panel again as I drove on the mountainous roads of the park: the car was overheating again.

Fortunately, I understand enough about cars to know that I shouldn’t continue driving a vehicle that’s overheating: It could cause the engine to seize, and I could be stranded. I pulled over and raised the hood, thinking that I would let the engine cool down and nurse the car back to Las Torres, my hotel. What a bummer, I thought. Here I am, on my much-anticipated trip to one of the most beautiful, remote places in the world, and I’m spending time dealing with a mundane problem like car trouble. And it wasn’t as if I could just pull out my cell phone and call Triple A. What was I going to do with the car? Suddenly, I realized just how far away from home I was.

Apparently, an open hood is an international symbol of car trouble, especially when someone is standing in front of it, gazing inside with a lost look. As I was peering under the hood in search of a broken water hose, leaking water pump, or whatever might be causing the problem, a small truck came up the road. The vehicle stopped, and three men and a girl of about 8 gamely emerged.

By then, I knew the Spanish word for water (agua) and hot (caliente) ― and that seemed to be all I needed to say. One of the men marched back to the truck, opened the back, and, to my amazement and gratitude, returned with two bottles of coolant. He took off his jacket and folded it over his hand to protect it as he took off the radiator cap and dodged an explosion of steaming water. He added the coolant, and I restarted the car. We waited to make sure the red light went out and didn’t come on again, passing my English/Spanish phrasebook back and forth as we tried to communicate about where we were from and what should be done about the car. I learned they were from nearby Puerto Natales and, like me, were there to visit the park.

Once the car had been running for several minutes without the red light, it was back to exploring the park. My rescuers left me with a bottle of coolant, and to make sure I was OK, followed me through the park for several miles. At one point, we stopped to take photos and exchange e-mail addresses. Then, at a later point in the drive, I looked into my rear view mirror, and they were gone. I was on my own again.

That wasn’t the last time I needed to add water to the ailing car, and when the day came for the drive back to Punta Arenas for my flight to Santiago, I started out at dawn with the back seat full of bottles of water, just in case. Fortunately, I made it back in plenty of time with no more overheating. The roads were empty; I saw more sheep than people.

If I had to do it over again, would I have traveled in a group, opted for the hotel’s van transportation, gone the “safe” route?

Nah.

Despite the car trouble, I wouldn’t want to give up the freedom the rental car provided, the ability to explore on my own at my own pace, to stop when and where I wanted for photographs, and to just take it all in. After dreaming of this place since I was a kid, I needed solitude to appreciate that I was truly there – at the “uttermost part of the Earth.”

Tips for Patagonia travelers
• Money. The nice thing about international travel in the age of the ATM is that you can use ATMs to get local currency at good rates with your debit or credit card. (Let your bank know you’re planning to do this before you leave home.) Except in the more remote areas, ATMs are relatively easy to find, especially in airports and downtown locations. But the tricky thing about spending money in Patagonia is that the region includes portions of both Argentina and Chile. You will probably be in both countries and need both Argentine pesos and Chilean pesos. And the exchange rates are quite different. For example, 100 Argentine pesos are worth about $29, but 100 Chilean pesos are only worth 16 cents! Ten U.S. dollars will get you 35 Argentine pesos—or 6,000 Chilean pesos! My solution was to keep each type of currency in a separate Ziploc bag, switch bags as I crossed borders, and rely on “FXCheatSheet” currency conversion tables I found online at http://www.oanda.com/.

• Language. Spanish is spoken in both Chile and Argentina. Many signs and menus are printed in both English and Spanish, and people who have a lot of contact with the public—such as airport, hotel, and restaurant employees—tend to know a smattering of English. As someone who speaks very little Spanish, I found that a smile and some basic words and phrases such as hola (hello), gracias (thank you), no entiendo (I don’t understand), and habla Engles? (Do you speak English?) went a long way. But it’s a good idea to know some Spanish and to carry a phrasebook.

• Seasons. When it’s winter in the United States, it’s summer in Patagonia, and vice versa. When I was there in December, the springlike 17-hour days started at about 5 a.m. and ended at about 10 p.m. By June, when it’s winter in Tierra del Fuego, sunrise and sunset are a scant seven hours apart.

• Weather. Patagonia is known for its unpredictable weather, which can be cold and wet for much of the year. But the most notorious aspect of Patagonian weather is the wind, which can exceed 50 mph. This southern tip of South America is the only significant landmass between the latitudes of 45 and 55 degrees south, so there is nothing else to slow the wind that roars around the world. When we hiked on Cape Horn, the gales were so strong that I actually had difficulty walking straight and holding up my camera to shoot photos.

• Getting around. Taxis are plentiful in Ushuaia and Punta Arenas, and most Torres del Paine lodges offer transportation from Punta Arenas or Puerto Natales. Rental cars are also an option. The major car rental companies have offices in Punta Arenas and Ushuaia, and you can even make online reservations. But be prepared to drive a stick shift and for the possibility that your car rental transaction won’t be seamless. I had confirmed reservations with a major auto rental company for a car in Ushuaia, only to find a dress shop, not a car-rental agency, at the address provided. With the help of my hotel manager, I tracked down a local company representative who brought the car to the hotel. In Punta Arenas, I went to the car rental company’s airport kiosk to get the keys for my rental car – but no one was there, nor could a representative be located by phone. And I needed the car for a five-hour drive to my hotel in Torres del Paine National Park! I was grateful to be able to get a vehicle from a local car rental company in the next kiosk, but the older car had a recurring problem with overheating.

• Driving. You’ll drive on the right side of the road like we do in the states, but odometers and speed limits are in kilometers, not miles. (About 62 miles equals 100 kilometers.) Road signs are in Spanish.