Ushuaia and the End of the World

Ushuaia is the capital of Tierra del Fuego, the great island shared by Argentina and Chile at the southern tip of South America, and it is generally regarded as the southernmost city in the world. It stands on the north shore of the Beagle Channel, the sheltered strait named for the ship that carried Charles Darwin through these waters, with the snow-streaked peaks of the Martial range rising directly behind the streets.

It calls itself el fin del mundo — the end of the world — and the phrase is more than a slogan. Ushuaia is the last city of the Americas, the point beyond which the land breaks into channels and islands and finally the open Southern Ocean. For our travellers it is the great hinge of the Andes to Antarctica journey: the place where a journey down the Andes ends and the crossing of the Drake Passage to the white continent begins.

The southernmost city, and how it came to be

Ushuaia's setting is dramatic and confined: a city of tens of thousands of people pressed onto a narrow shelf of land between the Beagle Channel and the mountains, so steep streets run almost straight from the waterfront into the hills.

Its modern history is layered. The indigenous Yamana people lived in this maritime world for thousands of years before European contact. A British mission arrived in the nineteenth century, and Argentina later established a penal colony here — the prison, like many remote ones, was used partly to settle and hold the territory. The old prison still stands and now houses a museum, one of the most rewarding stops in town for understanding how this far-southern city took shape.

The gateway to Antarctica

Ushuaia is the busiest embarkation port for Antarctica on Earth. The great majority of expedition voyages to the Antarctic Peninsula leave from its docks, because Ushuaia is simply the closest sizeable port to the continent — the crossing south is shorter from here than from anywhere else.

That crossing is the Drake Passage, the stretch of the Southern Ocean between Cape Horn and the South Shetland Islands, and it has a fierce reputation precisely because of the unobstructed westerly winds described in our piece on the Patagonian wind. The passage typically takes around two days each way. On our journeys Ushuaia is where travellers board the expedition ship, and a day or two in the city beforehand allows for rest, final preparation and a proper look at the town itself.

Tierra del Fuego National Park

Just west of the city lies Tierra del Fuego National Park, the southernmost national park in Argentina, where the Andes finally meet the sea. Its trails wind through southern beech forest — the lenga and nirre that clothe these latitudes — past peat bogs, glacial lakes and quiet coastal bays looking out on the channel.

Walks here are gentle to moderate rather than demanding, which makes the park a fine, restorative day either side of a bigger journey. The Senda Costera, or coastal path, traces the shoreline through forest and is among the most popular. The park is also the literal end of the road: Argentina's National Route 3 finishes here, at Bahia Lapataia, having run the length of the country from far to the north.

The Beagle Channel and its wildlife

No visit to Ushuaia is complete without going out onto the water. Boat trips run from the city pier along the Beagle Channel, passing rocky islets crowded with South American sea lions and colonies of cormorants whose guano stains the rock white.

A landmark on these cruises is Les Eclaireurs lighthouse, a small red-and-white tower on an islet that is often, if loosely, called the lighthouse at the end of the world. Some trips continue to islands where Magellanic penguins breed in season. It is an easy half-day, and it gives you the city's defining perspective: Ushuaia seen from the channel, a thin band of town beneath a wall of mountains.

Spending time, not just passing through

Many travellers treat Ushuaia only as an airport and a dock, which sells the place short. Two or three days here is well spent: a walk in Tierra del Fuego National Park, a cruise on the Beagle Channel, the prison museum and the small museums of Fuegian and maritime history, and time simply to absorb the strange, stirring sense of being at the bottom of the inhabited Americas.

Practically, a buffer in Ushuaia also protects the rest of a journey. Weather in the far south is unreliable and flights can be disrupted, so building in slack before an Antarctic departure is sensible rather than indulgent. On the Andes to Antarctica journey we deliberately give Ushuaia room in the itinerary — both as a worthwhile destination in its own right and as a calm threshold before the Drake Passage.