I arrived two days before the Explorer’s scheduled departure from Ushuaia. Located on the Beagle Channel and billed as the southernmost city in the world, Ushuaia, Argentina, 2,000 miles south of Buenos Aires, is the capital of Tierra del Fuego. Ushuaia was originally established as a penal colony by Argentina modeled after the British and French examples of Australia and Devil’s Island. In 1882 the president was fearful that neighboring Chile would contest sovereignty of Tierra del Fuego so ordered the establishment of a penal colony. From 1902 to 1947 the Bahia Golondrina (now a museum) held the most hardened criminals in South America.

On the first day in Ushuaia I toured the downtown first taking in the End of the World Museum. The display that caught my attention was of the indigenous people of Tierra del Fuego. After viewing the images of the indigenous people I began to understand the origin of the name, Land of Fire. Ferdinand Magellan named the place for all the fires he saw from his ship, thinking they were the Indians waiting to ambush him. In fact the fires were an absolute necessity as the Indians wore very little. Having a fire nearby was essential due to the year round low temperatures and their lack of clothing.

What was fascinating or more accurately, bewildering were the images depicting the Yahgan wearing very little clothing. There is even an image of a Yahgan sitting in his wooden boat with a fire burning. They hunted but didn’t use the animal skins for protection from the elements. Curious.

The last full blooded Yahgan died in 1999 and a display in the museum states only one person still speaks the Yahgan language. Who do they talk to I wondered?

After leaving the museum I walked up the slope through the town which doesn’t take long to walk through. I continued up the slope through the residential neighborhood surrounding the city center.

The homeowners have been bold and playful with color and whimsical in their designs. There are row after row of unique styles, no copy cats here. Ushuaia’s architecture is a contrast of steeped pitched corrugated iron sheet roofed wooden homes against the new modern hotels catering to the emerging tourist trade of ship bound penguin huggers, like myself.

During my first visit to Ushuaia in 2004 I had noticed huge areas of felled trees. At first I thought it was the result of strong winds which I had been experiencing. When I finally asked a local about the trees, his reply was to laugh and say, “No, it’s them damn beavers.”

He went on to tell me the tale of the beavers. When the jail was closed in the 1940’s Argentina’s military rulers decided Ushuaia should become a fur center. Fifty Canadian beavers were imported and turned loose in the surrounding forests.

Beavers fell tress and dam streams to create ponds to build their lodges and protect themselves from bears; their primary predator in Canada. Well, no one has told the beaver there are no bears anywhere near Tierra del Fuego. It is estimated there are now over 150,000 beavers, give or take a few thousand. It’s ironic that these same beavers are looking down on the port where Darwin and Captain Fitz Roy stopped to collect bio-samples that led to the writing of the Origin of the Species. Safely tucked away in their lodge, they must fall asleep laughing at the irony of this.

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