Best Foot Forward: Tierra del Fuego National Park

Unfortunately, the winter can be a tough time to visit the park. Most of the trails and roads are iced over making it difficult to get anywhere to do anything. No trekking for me this go around but instead I opted for a comfy heated bus to take me around the park. The park was created in 1960 and has a surface of 63,000 hectares. It occupies the southwestern Tierra del Fuego province near the border with Chile.

The first humans occupied Tierra del Fuego 10,000 years ago. The area covered by the national park was inhabited by the Yamana, who camped on its beaches and often travelled in canoes made of "lenga" to hunt sea mammals and collect shellfish. When settlers (initially missionaries) appeared in 1880, disease spread and the Yamana began to die out. In 2005, there is allegedly only one full-blooded native-speaking Yamana left, living on Isla Navarina. Nowadays, the only evidence you will see of the former Yamana inhabitants are piles of mussel shells overgrown with grass near the shore, which indicate areas of Yamana settlement.

A concheros circle - domestic refuse of the Yamana

Crushed mollusk shells from the Yamana

The forests are a mixture of Patagonic and Altos Andes forest, and "lenga" covers mountain slopes from an altitude of 600 meters. Guindo trees also occupy the wetter areas and some parts of the mountain slopes. On the guindos, you will often see large nodules with an orange fungus growing out of them: the parasitic "farolito chino”.

There are 20 species of mammal, including the red fox, the guanaco, the otter and the Canadian beaver (introduced and causing flooding in some areas of the park due to their dam-building). Rabbits have also been introduced and the damage they have is clearly visible in places. Birds include the black eyed albatross, the condor, the oystercatcher, the white cuaquene, the steam duck and the diving petrel.

Lago Roca

Lapataia Bay

And one big recommendation...be sure to save your $90 pesos and forgo the Train at the End of the World. It's a miniature train that maybe goes 5 mph...it's a silly novelty and sadly there is really nothing to see while on the train except for a "tree cemetery". How sad is that??