Land of fire (November 15 to 26)

We started our trip to Land of fire from El Calafate after seeing the glaciar Perito Moreno there. Therefore we had to go the same way back to Rio Gallegos from El Calafate as we did in the opposite direction already two weeks ago. The reason for making this deviation was that we wanted to postpone the arrival in Land of Fire a little bit more to the summer time there, having less cold days and especial less cold nights. But still we had night temperatures around 4 °C, but pretty nice weather with temperatures around 10 °C during daytime in land of fire.

To get from the continent to land of fire we had to cross the Strait of Magellan by a ferry. Compared to many traveller's description it was quite less windy at the time being there, but still then you get an impression of nature's power. The ferry has to fight against strong currents and winds and when coming to the pier, the ferry is not tightened to some capstan (Poller) on land, but the captain has to keep position by the engines while the cars and trucks disembark.

Because of the direction of the country border between Argentina and Chile one has to cross Chile when going to Ushuaia coming from Rio Gallegos (Arg). For crossing this border strict regulations about importing fresh products (e.g. vegetables and meat) are established, so this was the the first but not last time in our journey to calculate well when going to the grocery and sometimes we stayed a day more in one country to empty the fridge before crossing the border and eventually wasting the food.

When entering land of fire first we were welcomed by a herd of alpacas and later we discovered fantastic landscapes around Lago Fagnago. There are mystery forests with kind of dried out trees and a lot of very lively, fresh green Nothofagus antarctica (Südbuche) trees. This was a very welcomed variety to all the less vegetation and immense dust in the Argentinian pampas before.

In the national park close to Ushuaia we saw snow-capped mountains, trees bent by the permanent heavy winds, "sea food", and the southern-most post office of South America.

When we did a hike towards the Glaciar Martial having great views to the "End of the world". However, this impression is not really fulfilled, because in front of Ushuaia when looking to the south, there is immediately the next island, Isla Navarino, which is even more an "End of the world".

On the way out of Land of fire we passed again Lago Fagnano and the city of Tolhuin and this time we discovered an alternative camping place, not for staying the night but "sightseeing". "Camping and children's playground Hain" is run by a family and all things there are build by recycled material and some of them would be even considered art in more urban environments. Furthermore they build an oven to melt used beer cans to produce aluminum bars. And this comes with a fantastic view to the lake and mountains.

Then we crossed the border again to the Chilean part of Land of fire and coming to a small village called "Cerro Sombrero" with approx. 700 inhabitants. It was founded in the 1950's by ENAP, the state-run Chilean oil company for their workers (trabajador del petroleo) and their families. Still today almost everybody living here is working for ENAP, however the golden age has been faded. ENAP still pays for maintaining the small cinema where once in a while a movie is shown and football games are broadcast, runs the school and gym, but the decay is visible in many places.

With these very interesting insights in the way of living of the locals in this part of the world we finally left Land of fire with the ferry crossing the Stretch of Magellan again and heading on the Ruta 255 towards Punta Arenas.