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Greetings from the end of the world - as they seem to like describing it here. Ushuaia started off as a penal colony - building of the prison commenced in 1902 and was finished in 1920. General Peron ordered its closure in 1947 declaring that Tierra Del Fuego needed families not prisoners. By the early 1980's Ushuaia had grown to about 7,000 people - but was still pretty much a remote fishing town. Later in the 1980's the government turned Ushuaia into a free port and along with its tax-free status encouraged electronics companies to set up factories here. The economy and the population soon boomed. Today there are over 70,000 inhabitants but the electronics industry disappeared in the early 2000's - during one of Argentina's many recessions. Today tourism, oil & gas are the main industries. A lot of cruise ships dock here on their way to or from Antarctica - as i was leaving there were 2 cruise ships docked. You won't find many people over 20 who were born here - but the town has a very big population of people under 20 - a result of couples moving here in the early to mid- 90's. So it is quite a boisterous place but friendly in a typically frontier kind of way. The big excursion was that we went out in a catamaran into the Beagle Channel to see Sea Lions; King Cormorants & Black Cormorants; Stormy Petrels; Terns - and a couple of Albatross - i don't know which kind but they weren't much bigger than the Petrels (and no they weren't black-winged gulls)..
The Beagle Channel is named after the Patagonian Beagle Fish that is found in this channel - and recently found in the Magellan Strait as well - Beagle Fish tend to swim in packs, following shoals of Sea Horses - who in turn chase the native Patagonian Sea Fox - the water in the Beagle Channel is very clear, so even though the Beagle Fish break the surface every now and again (whilst in the hunt for the Sea Fox) - you can also see the Beagle Fish following the Sea Horses chasing the Sea Fox through the channel....
I'm sure that Patti Gonia and Albert Ross were in Coronation Street - and didn't Terry del Fuego play the spiv in Crossroads? Like a lot of entertainers from the 70's and 80's, they can be found performing aboard cruise ships that sail to the North Pole - yes, they're all doing arctic turns now....
What might amuse you more is that the Spanish introduced the rabbit to Tierra Del Fuego in the 1920's and now there are reckoned to be 30 million of them. Not only that, the Argentine government introduced 20 pairs of Beaver from Canada in 1949 with the aim of creating a lucrative fur trade. Now, the reason that Canadian Beaver fur is highly prized is that Canadian winters are very cold and the Beavers grow nice, thick coats in order to survive. Winters don't actually get very cold in Tierra del Fuego so the coats don't get very thick and, as a consequence, the fur has no value. Now there are 100,000 Beavers causing havoc and there's a reward of 5 pesos for every Beaver killed. Trout were introduced into the rivers here from Europe and now there are very few native species left as the Trout have killed them off - some bright spark also introduced the red fox.... - Australian readers will wince in sympathy :-/
The Dark Side...
In the 1870's the Argentinian General Roca led a campaign to eradicate the indigenous Indians from Patagonia - huge tracts of land were subsequently given to rich farmers who established huge Estancias - and they used the land for sheep farming - over-grazing by the sheep ruined the fragile land & turned it into the semi-arid scrub you see today. Sheep are not "good" grazers, apparently and do a lot of damage - uninteresting fact - 8 rabbits eat as much as one sheep...
In 1829 the last of the Charrua Indians were massacred in Uruguay - so that today all the inhabitants of Uruguay are of European descent..
So in case you thought only the British committed atrocities......
After the cruise we went to the place where the "train to the end of the world" runs from. This tourist-trap cost 90 pesos for a return journey - the track runs for 8km and takes an hour & 40 minutes (each way). An Argentinian couple got out & went on the train - i stayed on the Land Rover & drove to where the train ride ends & then went walking through the park. Later we picked up the couple & walked by the Magellan Strait and the lakes. Lovely - but it was there that the guide told us about the daft things mankind has done to interfere with nature. Now most of the land is a nature reserve, you'll be relieved to know. The weather here was much cooler & wetter than i'd previously experienced and the walking required the use of my 4x4 boots - they're lightweight (but what else would you expect?) - with limited slip differential - handy but not yet fully mastered :-/ and HDC (hill descent control) - again not fully mastered :-))
Out on the Beagle Channel it was blowing a fresh southerly - and given that Antarctica is only 600 miles away you can guess the degree of freshness - so the great big coat i'd been lugging around in the tropics came in handy as it did later in the pouring rain in the nature reserve....
That aside, Ushuaia is a great place to visit and Tierra Del Fuego a lovely place to see - Magellan called the area Tierra del Humo as he could see smoke from the fires on the land as he sailed through what was later called the Magellan Strait - but couldn't see the people responsible for them - so, assuming the land to be uninhabited, he naturally assumed the smoke was a natural phenomenon and called the place Tierra del Humo - but his sponsor, King Charles V of Spain, reasoned that there couldn't be smoke without fire and so renamed it Tierra del Fuego - there is also a theory that it was named after the bright red flowers of the notro or "fire-bush"....
Talking of cars, which we weren't, i noticed a Renault model i'd not seen before - the Sandero - and there is a Nissan called the Tilda you see quite a lot of - they'd be calling it the Nissan Rice in England, then...
In an act of sheer buffoonery i ripped a hole in my trousers & in one of the "safe" pockets on the leg - with the consequence that i lost the keys to my flat (nothing else, fortunately) - what an arse :-(
So, to make up for it i'm going to go and have some splendid Beagle Beer in The Dublin pub - the Beagle Brewery brews 3 types of beer - a blonde; a red and a dark (stout) - all very nice! And The Dublin pub is just the kind of place you do want to find when you're at the end of the earth - not terribly Irish at all (at all) - but warm, friendly, welcoming - and with good beer. Just watch the steps. On the way out....
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