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View from the end of the world, Argentina

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.

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 .