Ushuaia - The End of the World

In an earlier post I had written about Tierra del Fuego, the archipelago at the southern tip of South America. Even just a hundred years ago, this region was untouched and exactly as it has been over centuries. But now it is completely transformed and the ancient people have almost completely died out or mixed in with the European people who settled here in the 20th century.

Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego is a modern city now and holds the title "Fin del Mundo" or "End of the World". There is one Chilean city even south of Ushuaia, called Punta Arenas. But Ushuaia in Argentina claimed the title first.


Arriving in Ushuaia is an experience in itself, because of the dramatic approach to the city. Flights from the mainland skim low over the southern tip of the Andes before dipping down into the cluster of islands, landing on a tiny airstrip that runs from tip to tip across a small island!

This landing is often rough due to the constant strong winds in this area, and I was quite nervous. So I left my camera in the overhead bin fully expecting to be jostled about. But the landing turned out to be perfect, and absolutely smooth. Others we met who landed the very next day said they didn't have such a smooth landing, and so we were pretty lucky.

The plane almost skimmed the water's surface on its gentle approach, and just as I thought we would be landing in water, we touched down on the tip of the island on a bright and sunny day. Since I couldn't get up to get my camera, I have no pictures, but here's one from our take-off, when we left Ushuaia.



The city is surrounded by snow-capped mountains, and has variable weather always. It can go from sunny and warm to breezy, cold and rainy in hours, and one has to be prepared.

Lupins were in bloom everywhere when we visited in January, and the city was absolutely beautiful. Lupins are not native to this region though, and were introduced by European settlers.



We stayed at a little bed & breakfast which was a 15 minute walk from the main downtown area of the city. These red lupins were on either side of our door.



Here are some more pictures of the bursts of color we saw all over the town as we walked around. I couldn't resist taking pictures of them!




We walked several miles every day getting to and from the downtown area, because we got almost all our meals from the only ALL vegetarian take-out place in Ushiaia - called El Bambu.



We found it really hard to find vegetarian food that I could trust in Argentina. The only pasta dish we would find in the restaurants in Patagonia would usually smell odd, but I would eat it quickly without delving into details about the ingredients, because I didn't have many other options. Then we took to cooking our meals at our hostel, but after a long day's hiking, cooking isn't the easiest chore!

So we really appreciated the delicious, affordably priced food at El Bambu!



Most Antarctic cruises start from Ushuaia, and the port is stunning at night. I took my tripod out there one night and took some pictures of the night lights at the port. More of that in the next post.

Here's one more lupin picture before I end this post!

The ancient people of Tierra del Fuego

Tierra del Fuego is an archipelago off the southern tip of the South American continent, and is made up of several small islands that are exposed to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, as well as the cold currents from Antarcica to the south.

This is a windswept land where winters are freezing cold and summers are cool, where a day can change from sunny and pleasant to bitterly cold with gale-force winds within hours.


Yet, this fascinating land has been occupied by humans for more than 12,000 years now. Nomadic hunter gatherers crossed a land bridge from the main continent to get here all those years ago, before the sea level rose and separated the islands from the mainland.

Their descendants, the Mannekenk and Selknam (or Ona) people still lived here in 1869 when the first white settler founded an Anglican Mission in Tierra del Fuego. Since then, the indigenous people who had lived here for so long, have quickly died out, due to exposure to different ways, diseases and so on.



All that remains is a small, modest museum in the city of Ushuaia, which tells their history in simple, but carefully prepared displays that at best look like school projects of gifted children.

In contrast, the more recent history of this area is displayed in larger museums (with steeper entrance fees).

The Yamana Museum

We skipped visiting the more recent museums, but spend a large part of an afternoon inside the Yamana museum. No one else visited while we were there. We were told to take as many pictures of the displays as we wanted, so I took a lot of them. It's a good way to encourage sharing of the fascinating history of these cultures.

The Yamana: Canoe people of the Beagle Channel

The Yamana or Yaghan people were still living their traditional lives in Tierra del Fuego 150 years ago, so this isn't ancient history.

They were sea-going people who spent long periods aboard their canoes, living off the sea. While out on the ocean, the men hunted seals from the prow, while the women collected shellfish from the oceans.




The fact that utterly fascinates me is that only the women could swim. And since the Yamana didn't wear any clothes, these amazing women took to the icy waters with only seal grease protecting them from the cold! It was so cold even in the summer while we visited, that it is mind boggling to me that these women were so tough.



The Yamana always carried fire with them, even on to the canoes. They set the fire in a space in the middle of their canoes. This was so that they could instantly start a larger fire once they arrived on land, since it was always so cold.



The arrival of European settlers in 1884 mostly wiped out the Yamana due to a measles epidemic. Also, the Yamana way of life was very finely tuned to the environment they lived in, and had been honed over hundreds of years. When well-meaning missionaries tried to clothe them, the Yamana contracted pneumonia from the damp clothes that they wore, since their sea-faring ways didn't match the clothes they were given.



The last of the Yamana, Abuela Rosa, died in 1982. Some descendants of the Yamana still live in Tierra del Fuego, but there is only one surviving speaker of the Yamana language alive today.

The Selknam

The Selknam or Ona were powerful, fearless people who also lived in Tierra del Fuego at the same time as the Yamana. The community hunted guanacos, eating the meat and fashioning clothes out of the guanaco skin. They were expert hunters who used bows and arrows with great skill.



When European settlers arrived here in the 1880s and set up sheep farms, they fenced off large areas of Selknam land, and prohibited entry to the native people. This led to conflict, especially when the Selknam started hunting the sheep, since any animal was fair game to them.

This unfortunately led to a systematic genocide of the Selknam people. Headhunters were paid money for bringing in heads of the Selknam they had killed, with bonuses paid for pregnant women. The heads were even shipped off to collectors and museums in Europe. Poisoned meat was also given to the Selknam in the attempt to get rid of them.



In 1881 around when Tierra del Fuego was first colonized, about 3500 Selknam people lived on the big island of Tierra del Fuego. By the late 1920s, the hundred or so of the Selknam that remained, had to succumb to acculturization.

The last two pure-blooded Selknam: Lola Kiepje and Esteban Yshton passed away in the late 1960s.

For the whole time that we were in Tierra del Fuego in the city of Ushuaia, I felt a little disconnected from the modern city around me. It was cold and rainy on most days, and as we walked up to high glaciers and hiked in the forests, I felt the presence of these ancient people around me. I kept trying to see this land through their eyes. What a great loss it is to us that their culture is no more!

PS: The photos above are the ones I took from displays at the museum. I don't know who the original photographers were.