Argentina: Onwards to the end of the world

Los Yamanas Hotel on the shores of the Beagle Channel in Ushuaia the port for Antarctica.

The slogan on the napkins at Tante Sara cafe and bar proclaims cheerily, "Disfruta, es el fin del mundo: enjoy, it's the end of the world".

Fair comment. This is Ushuaia, which to all intents and purposes is indeed the end of the world. It is the southernmost city, certainly looks to be the loneliest and is the stepping off point for most trips to Antarctica.

It is also an extraordinarily beautiful place where it is easy to obey the napkin instruction and enjoy yourself.

No, let me rephrase that. Ushuaia sits in an extraordinarily beautiful setting where it is easy to enjoy yourself if you're into outdoor activities, such as trekking, find yourself uplifted by stunning scenery and discover romance in wild and desolate places like Cape Horn, which lies a mere 150km further south, or Tierra del Fuego, the Land of Fire, of which Ushuaia is the capital.

The city is vaguely reminiscent of Queenstown: a town hit by a tidal wave of tourism that has grown at breakneck speed - its population is 60,000 and rising - with seemingly few controls on building.

As a result, the starkly beautiful shoreline of the Beagle Channel and the massive Montes Martial mountains, with their thickly forested slopes and snow-capped peaks, are now often obscured by a peculiar jumble of buildings which follow no discernible pattern and look wholely alien in this pristine landscape.

The town centre, which has grown around the pier from which the Antarctic cruise boats depart, is full of cafes and souvenir shops but manages to exude a sort of Wild West atmosphere.

Indeed, after enjoying a fat tankard of the locally brewed Beagle beer in the Tante Sara, I half expected to see one of the locals in their heavy leather coats whip out a six-shooter and drill someone dead.

But, no, if there's a hazard in Ushuaia it's not gunfighters, but crazy drivers and roads not quite up to the volume of traffic.

That's hardly a surprise when you consider that, until recently, the town's main industries were prisons and sheep - rather like Australia, really - and its population was a few thousand.

Few people have heard of Ushuaia but it is the centre of an area which has played a significant role in world - and New Zealand - history.

Tierra del Fuego is separated from the South American mainland by the Strait of Magellan, named after Ferdinand Magellan, who sailed through there in 1520 on the way to the first circumnavigation of the world. He named the island after the fires of the native inhabitants he saw on shore.

Ushuaia sits on the Beagle Channel, named after HMS Beagle, which explored the area in 1827 and again in 1833, on the second occasion under the command of Robert Fitzroy, later Governor of New Zealand, and Charles Darwin, who used the material gathered on the voyage to write his revolutionary The Origin of Species.

The Drake Passage, the 650km-wide watery gap between Tierra del Fuego and the Antarctic Peninsula, the mountainous finger of land which stretches out from the Antarctic towards South America, was named after Sir Francis Drake, the Englishman who in 1580 completed the second circumnavigation, although ironically he too went through the Strait of Magellan.
Other great sailors and explorers whose names are synonymous with the region include James Cook, Louis de Bougainville, Joshua Slocum and Sir Peter Blake. And, of course, most of the early settlers of New Zealand had to survive the dreaded passage around Cape Horn to get here.

Those various strands of history are on display in three different museums in Ushuaia.

The story of the early inhabitants, whose fires Magellan saw, is detailed in the Museo Yamana. This gives an interesting but idiosyncratic and sometimes amateurish picture of how the natives were able to flourish in such a seemingly inhospitable environment with little clothing, rudimentary homes and a few primitive implements.

Cook described them as "perhaps as miserable a set of People as are this day upon Earth", but by all accounts the locals thought they lived in a land of plenty.

I guess it's all relative. The luxurious Los Yamanas Hotel, where I stayed in Ushuaia, has two replica Yamana homes in its forecourt and seeing them certainly made me grateful for the benefits of central heating and double glazing in such a bleak place.

The Museo del Fin del Mundo, the official local museum, also has displays showing how the early inhabitants lived, as well as exhibits on explorers, early settlers and some of the numerous shipwrecks in the area. In addition, it has sections on the prison era, a replica of an early grocery store and a marvellous display of local birds.

The Museo Maritimo de Ushuaia is in the El Presidio naval base in what was once the main prison block. There you can get an even more depressing picture of what convict life was like but the main emphasis is on the Antarctic, its wildlife and exploration.

After that, well, you're probably better off getting out of Ushuaia into the beautiful countryside. Some great treks are available in the area, but as I had only one day I opted for a walk in the Tierra del Fuego National Park.

Several regular van-bus services operate from the Ushuaia waterfront to the park, and though the access roads may be terrible the scenery is well worth the effort.

We got off the bus at Lago Roca, Lake Roca, a camping area and store beside a picturesque lake with lofty mountains which kept the cold wind at bay, tranquil forests, lots of wildlife and some great walking tracks.

The forests are mainly beech, making them reminiscent of Westland, and underlining the fact that Tierra del Fuego, New Zealand and Antarctica were once all part of the super southern continent of Gondwana.

But the wildlife is different, with all manner of waterfowl and seabirds, birds of prey zillions of rabbits, including several black ones, and, along the Lapataia River which flows out of the lake, a couple of huge beaver dams (beavers and rabbits are among the disastrous introductions to South America).

A pathway runs alongside the river leading past the dams to another camping area at Lapataia Bay, an inlet on the Beagle Channel.

Lapataia is the end of the road, not just of the park road but also the Pan American Highway, which starts some 18,000km away in Prudhoe, Alaska. It is, quite literally, about as far as you can go.

Unless, of course, you want to go to Antarctica, in which case the Beagle Channel is just the beginning.

CHECKLIST

Antarctica

Getting there

Most Antarctic cruises start from Ushuaia, South America. LAN flies to Santiago five days a week (six, from July) and during the summer there are direct flights three times a week down to Ushuaia. Standard return air fares start from around $2448.

Getting around

World Expeditions have Antarctic cruises from November to February. These include trips to the Antarctic Peninsula, South Georgia and the Ross Sea.

Peter Hillary will lead a one-off voyage to the Antarctic Peninsula and the South Shetland Islands departing Ushuaia on December 6. It will focus on the history of Antarctica's explorers, historical sites, wildlife and pristine landscapes. Hillary has been to Antarctica 11 times and has a keen knowledge of its great explorers including Scott, Shackleton, Mawson and Amundsen. Berths cost from US$5290 ($8230) for a twin public cabin to US$6990 for a superior cabin.

Further information

Peter Hillary presents a free Antarctica information evening on April 12 in Auckland. Call World Expeditions on 0800 350 354 or visit www.worldexpeditions.co.nz (see link below).

For more information try www.antarctica.govt.nz; www.iaato.org; (see links below) and Lonely Planet's Antarctic guidebook.

The best book I've read about taking a trip to Antarctica is End Of the Earth: Voyaging to Antarctica by Peter Matthiessen (National Geographic).