Tierra del Fuego Travel Guide

Tierra del Fuego is an island, shared with Chile, separated from the rest of Argentina by a strait. Ushuaia is the only town most visitors see, and it earns the attention: the southernmost city in the world, built up a hillside on the north shore of the Beagle Channel, with the Martial range behind it and the water in front. The channel itself is the reason to get on a boat, running past sea lion colonies and the lighthouse that every photograph of the end of the world seems to feature. Route 3 runs west out of town and simply stops inside Tierra del Fuego National Park, at a sign marking the end of the Pan-American Highway.

Getting here is a flight, not a drive. Buenos Aires to Ushuaia is about three and a half hours in the air, and the overland alternative crosses into Chile and back out again with a ferry in between. Ushuaia is also where almost every Antarctic voyage departs, which lifts prices and fills beds from November through March in a way the town's size would not otherwise explain.

We have traveled the channel, the park and the town across a full stay here, and the thing that surprised us was how green it is. This is not the dry steppe most of Patagonia turns out to be. It is southern beech forest, peat bog and standing water, right up to the treeline.