Ushuaia is located very far south. So far south it’s a six hour drive from the bottom of the Americas continent. So south we drove through a snowstorm in the middle of summer on arrival to the city. So south it’s the starting point for most visits to Antarctica.
If the weather and Antarctic bound vessels in the harbour aren’t enough of a reminder for how far south you are, the fact the town slogan of “the end of the world” is plastered everywhere certainly is. The city of Ushuaia’s main claim to fame is that it’s the southernmost city in the world.
It’s seriously everywhere. The end of the world train. The end of the world sign by the harbour. The end of the world museum.
There is only one problem with all of this. Located even further south is Puerto Williams, a town on the Chilean island of Navarino. Now on a technicality, Ushuaia can claim to be the southernmost city in the world, as Puerto Williams is only a town. However, it’s not like Puerto Williams is just three houses and a general store – more than 2,000 people call it home and it has seen a large increase in its population in recent times.
It will be interesting to see what size Puerto Williams needs to reach before Ushuaia can no longer claim it is the southernmost anything. Based on similar examples, all evidence points to Ushuaia just ignoring any competition. Indeed, as we passed a lighthouse on a tour of the Beagle Channel, our guide said that we may have heard it called the “lighthouse at the end of the world” (there we go again…), as it’s the most southern lighthouse in Argentina. This completely ignores the fact that the actual southernmost lighthouse in the world is located over 100km further south on the Hornos Islands in Chile.
I don’t think this is a huge problem or anything, but it is funny that a number of travelers come to Ushuaia purely to have been to the “end of the world”. A few people at our hostel told Erin it was the reason they were in Ushuaia for New Years. It would’ve been funny to be there when they realised they were going to have to go a bit further south to tick that one off the bucket list.
It also does Ushuaia a massive disservice. It’s a great city in its own right. Surrounded by mountains on three sides and the Beagle Channel on the other, the location is beautiful. There is an impressive national park nearby, an interesting history as a penal colony and no shortage of things to do.
Our week in Ushuaia could be divided into two distinct halves. The first three days were spent struggling to find places that were open over the Christmas period, and trying to organise a last minute deal on a trip to Antarctica.
With considerably lighter pockets in the second half of the week, we were able to take advantage of being offered free places on some tours around Ushuaia run by the company we booked our Antarctic trip with.
On these tours we took a boat through the Beagle Channel to an island full of penguins (Magellanic, Gentoo and one King), saw the main sights of the Tierra Del Fuego National Park and checked out a few lakes to the north of Ushuaia.
These tours further proved to me that, where possible, I’d rather avoid a tour group and do something independently. I find it hard to make any connection with a place when, along with twenty other people, you jump out of a bus for five minutes to take a photo and then it’s back on board and straight to the next sight. You’re also bound to get at least one annoying person in the group, who you can’t get away from for the duration of the tour.
That said, with around $400US worth of tours given to us for free, it was a pretty handy way to see a number of the main attractions around Ushuaia.
As our Antarctica tour doesn’t depart Ushuaia until the 10th of January, we’ve decided to fly north for a week and visit the two towns based around the Los Glaciers National Park in Argentina, El Calafate and El Chalten. Then we’ll fly back down to Ushuaia and on to Antarctica for 12 days. We couldn’t be more excited. From the place that calls itself the end of the world to the place actually located at the bottom of the earth. Fingers crossed the Drake Passage plays nice.
Andrew
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