Tierra del Fuego: A Trip to the End of the World

In 1520, Ferdinand Magellan, on his voyage of circumnavigation trying to discover a different route to the “Spice Islands,” sailed through a calmer, safer shortcut through the tip of South America. Traversing the strait that bears his name, the expedition crew spotted many fires of the native peoples along the coast. Hence, the area was named Tierra del Fuego — land of fire.

Today, Tierra del Fuego — an archipelago of islands that are part of Chilean and Argentinian Patagonia — is still a unique, wild and must-see part of the world.

Two entry options

You can choose two cities of entry, one in Chile and the other in Argentina. We started in Punta Arenas (two words, not one like in Costa Rica), Chile. Punta Arenas considers itself the southernmost city on the South American continent. Larger than you might think, this city of 150,000 people, with an international airport, is the gateway to Torres del Paine National Park to its north, and also the oil fields of Patagonia, and is the supplier to research centers and tourism in Antarctica. Surprisingly Victorian in architecture and cosmopolitan in nature, Punta Arenas features a central park containing a famous, and controversial, sculpture of Magellan.

From Punta Arenas you take a ferry across to Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego. The 90-minute trip — longer if the ferry is going against the notorious Patagonian winds that we battled while we were there — arrives in the town of Porvenir. Porvenir has an interesting history that starts in the 1880s. That’s when the area was opened by the government of Chile and settled by sheep farmers and gold prospectors, mostly coming from Croatia. The Croatian influence is still strong there today.

The must-see attractions in Porvenir start at the local museum, which exhibits artifacts from the early settlers, including a rebuilt interior of a pulperia. The term pulperia for a small shop in Chile predates its use in Costa Rica, but the word roots and derivation is just as murky. The museum also has a history of the Selkim, the original people on the island when the Europeans arrived. The tale is sad and horrible, as they were systematically eliminated, with even a bounty and hunting of them allowed. By 1980, the genocide left only a handful of indigenous people.

Stromatolites

Outside of town you can visit Laguna de los Cisnes (Swan Lake) — a misnomer since the highly saline lake environment supports mostly flamingos. The protected park here contains stromatolites, the oldest known living organisms and a precursor to modern algae. Fossil stromatolites one billion years old have been found. Live ones are found today only in a few parts of the world — Australia, Canada, Turkey and here in Chile. These living fossils can be seen after a long, cold and windy walk out a boardwalk almost a kilometer long.

On the outskirts of town, near the ferry, is a modern lighthouse on the Chilean end of the Straits of Magellan. On the other side of the Strait, in Argentina, sits another older lighthouse that was the inspiration for Jules Verne’s last novel, “The Lighthouse at the End of the World.” Standing on the edge of the Straits of Magellan is one of those amazing things you never thought would be on your bucket list.

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