By Peter Neville-Hadley
Meridian Writers Group
USHUAIA, Argentina
— A banner along the dock wall visible from cruise ships leaving the
harbour says it all: “USHUAIA. End of the world beginning of everything.”
The last peaks in the
long chain of the Andes stride above the city, poking into the low cloud and
the low, colourfully painted wooden houses that struggle up the mountainside
but give up even before the trees do.
The planet’s southernmost
city sits at the furthest tip of South America, at 54 degrees South, guarding
the Beagle Channel. It earns a living from Antarctic cruise ships, from
visitors to the vast Tierra de Fuego National Park and to a list of “southernmost”
attractions, including the southernmost railway line, prison, and its most
surprising immigrant, the Canadian beaver.
Ushuaia was founded by
Argentina as a penal colony and naval base in 1884, with 10 prisoners sent
south to build their own prison as well as a much-needed lighthouse, and also
to provide the authorities with a visible demonstration of the country’s claim
of sovereignty over this far-flung territory, 3,000 kilometres south of Buenos
Aires.
The jail’s final
incarnation, begun in 1902 and in operation to 1947, remains one of the town’s
principle attractions, a short walk east past slightly ramshackle and gaudy
houses, mock-Tudor shops selling trekking gear and toy penguins, and
restaurants with hearty, meaty menus.
An impressive three-storey,
yellow-painted rotunda radiates two-storey arms now functioning as museums of
prison life and of Ushuaia’s maritime history. The dimly lit central tower is
bizarrely filled with sunshades under which you can sip a cappuccino in the
company of the prison cat, at what must be one of the world’s most bizarre
cafés. You can also dress in striking blue-and-yellow-striped prison garb and
pose for photos.
Displays relate the sad
story of the original tribal inhabitants, the Yamaná, who suffered badly under
European encroachments. From 1884 measels, pneumonia and tuberculosis
drastically reduced their numbers. There were only 45 left by 1925. Although
many Ushuaians carry tribal blood, the last pure-blooded Yamaná died in 2005.
Between two of the
prison’s arms stands a battered miniature steam locomotive, left over from a
20-kilometre narrow-gauge line the prisoners built to bring wood from the
surrounding beech forests, subsequently used by commercial logging operations.
Eight kilometres west of town a surviving section now has gleaming, hissing
engines and toy carriages that rattle along a stream-side route into Tierra del
Fuego National Park.
All of the five major
kinds of tree in the forest are beeches, and the most commonly seen wildlife is
the beaver. Twenty-five pairs were brought from Canada in 1948 in order to
start a fur trade. When the business failed, the beavers were set free. Now
there are around 50,000, as many as the population of Ushuaia itself,
completely levelling some areas of forest.
But hiking trails give
spectacular views of pristine bays and soaring peaks, and a sense of complete
remoteness only a short distance from the snug cafés of the town: a sense of
truly being at the end of the world.
Access
For information on travel
in Argentina visit the country’s Secretariat of Tourism website at
www.turismo.gov.ar
.
PHOTO CAPTION
Penguins observe the M/S
Explorer
. Most cruise ships are limited to 25 Antarctic
ports; the smaller
Explorer
(just 108 passengers) has visited more than 250.
PHOTO CREDIT
Peter Neville-Hadley/Meridian Writers’ Group
Global warming or no,
Antarctica is cool
By Peter Neville-Hadley
Meridian Writers’ Group
USHUAIA,
Argentina—Expedition leader Brad Rhees’s advice for the two-day crossing
of the notoriously rough Drake Passage was blunt:
“Don’t put on your desk
what you don’t want on the floor.”
But although our voyage
from Ushuaia on the southern tip of Argentina to the Antarctic Peninsula aboard
the M/S
Explorer
was rocky,
it was more lullaby than lurch.
The first human to set
foot in the Antarctic did so only in 1821 and no more than around 300,000 have
visited since. But annual tourism has tripled in recent years and is expected
to reach 20,000 to 25,000 per annum. Global warming or no, Antarctica is
suddenly “cool.”
Recently acquired and
refitted by Canadian-owned G.A.P Adventures, the
Explorer
became in 1970 the first purpose-built
passenger vessel to visit the continent. The 108-passenger ship looks like a
lifeboat parked next to modern liners, but has built up a prodigious private
library of navigational material for landings no other ship makes. Merely 25
Antarctic locations receive 95 per cent of tourists, but the
Explorer
has visited more than 250.
Our first landing, to an
island in the Aitcho Archipelago, began with wrapping up to a degree that would
have made Neil Armstrong feel underdressed, then descending a steep, narrow,
wobbling gangway and carefully timing the step into a bobbing Zodiac
inflatable.
Gentoo penguins thronged
the slopes. The skyline bristled with their silhouettes. Many of their chicks
were already quite large, some moulting towards a sleeker adult form. Their
mothers tried to tempt them seawards by providing small snacks of regurgitated
krill, then retreating into the water.
The rules said we had to
keep at least five metres away, but someone had forgotten to tell the penguins.
Curious, fluffy chicks came to pull at the clothing and hair of those who lay
down to take photos at penguin eye level.
The fear after the first
landing was that each experience would be much the same, but there was always
something new.
At Culverville Island we
trekked over a headland to watch elephant seals wallowing, and at Neko Harbour
on the mainland we struggled uphill through thick snow parallel to trenches
called penguin highways, with rush-hour quantities of the creatures skating and
sliding down to the water.
At the former British
Faraday Base, sold to the Ukrainians in 1996 for £1, staff were eager to
welcome visitors to what was now Academician Vernadsky, its spartan conditions
rendered instantly homely by the smell of freshly baked bread. A brief tour of
the laboratories and living quarters ended at the bar, a startling replica of
an English country pub, right down to the dartboard.
The schedule called for a
crossing of the Polar Circle, but the winds were marshalling the pack ice
against us and the ship had to shoulder its way through slabs of royal icing,
dusted with sugar. Just short of target, finding the ice was closing up behind
us, we carved a semicircle and returned north, having gone further south than
any non-ice-breaker that season.
Access
The Antarctic cruise
season runs from November to March. Cruises with the M/S
Explorer
start from Ushuaia. G.A.P Adventures can
arrange flights from Buenos Aires.
For more information
visit the G.A.P Adventures website at
www.gapadventures.com
.