The Tierra del Fuego region
It is a project that gives hope: in 2011, exactly 130 years after the conclusion of the contract on the political division of Tierra del Fuego, the first cross-border protected area on America's southern tip was designed: the Yendegaia National Park.
It creates an ecological corridor between the Chilean National Park Alberto de Agostini and the Argentine National Park Tierra del Fuego on the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego - as the main island is called in Spanish.
display
With 48,000 square kilometers, it takes up more than half of the archipelago that extends to Isla Hornos (Cape Horn).
Whether the Strait of Magellan, discovered in 1520 as the shortest connection between the Atlantic and Pacific, Tierra del Fuego was the focus of European seafarers for 400 years.
With the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, the island world, which can only be used for cattle breeding, was again sidelined.
Although three of the four national parks in the archipelago were founded in the middle of the last century, tourism worth mentioning did not emerge until the 1990s with fjord and Antarctic tourism.
display
Since then, Ushuaia in particular has been booming, especially since the port city can be reached by car from motherland Argentina.
The Carretera Austral is now being extended to the south so that travelers in western Patagonia can also travel to the Torres del Paine National Park and on to the Chilean part of Tierra del Fuego.
Source: Infographic Die Welt
Argentina advertises the southernmost ski area in the world
Tierra del Fuego hopes for the 2030 Winter Olympics. It is still unclear whether Argentina's application to the IOC will be successful - the advertising effect for Cerro Castor, the world's southernmost ski area near Ushuaia, is already great.
It would be the first winter games in the southern hemisphere.
Attractive: The snow-sure ski area has no mountain snow, but latitude snow.
The resort, which is only between 195 and 1057 meters above sea level, has been expanded since it opened, with easy to tricky runs (29 kilometers of slopes) and lots of freestyle snow fun on 600 hectares - long popular with European professional teams who want to train in summer.
The winter sports resort Cerro Castor is also attractive for snowboarders
Source: picture alliance / dpa
The fastest circumnavigation of Cape Horn
display
The Hamburg sailing ship “Priwall” needed five days and almost 14 hours to cross the southern tip of America from east to west;
the record set 83 years ago for the fastest circumnavigation of Cape Horn is still valid today.
“Kaphoornier” is the name of seafarers who circumnavigate the Cape on cargo sailors.
In 2003, their world association dissolved - due to a lack of young talent: The last tall ship to master the Cape without an auxiliary engine was the "Pamir" in 1949.
Penguins on the Beagle Channel
It was not until 1978 that Chile and Argentina ended their decades of military border disputes in the Beagle Channel, with the mediation of Pope John Paul II. A beneficial decision - also for nature.
display
The way to Tierra del Fuego has always been open to penguins, but it is only in the last 40 years that more and more king, magellanic and donkey penguins have settled in the now peaceful archipelago, on both sides of the border.
Tip: There are guided tours to the penguin colonies on Bahia Inútil and Isla Martillo.
No matter whether in Chile or Argentina - the king penguins feel at home on the Beagle Channel
Source: Getty Images / imageBROKER RF
A luxury adventure for cruise vacationers
Punta Arenas, northwest of the Strait of Magellan, lies on the edge of Tierra del Fuego, which extends south of the strait to Cape Horn.
From the Chilean city, the archipelago can be explored on spectacular fjord trips: You lead through the Beagle Channel, discovered in 1831, around the cape and end in Ushuaia, Argentina.
What is now a safe luxury adventure for crusaders was life-threatening back then.
Visitors can get an idea of this at the Museo Nao Victoria in Punta Arenas, where they can see the faithful replica of the yacht "Victoria" from Magellan's fleet and the "HMS Beagle", after which the waterway was named.
Ushuaia honors a German aviation pioneer
"This is my Tierra del Fuego, this is my dream", wrote Gunther Plüschow in 1929 in his book "Silberkondor über Tierra del Fuego".
The aviation pioneer was the first person to cross the Darwin Cordillera on Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn.
In 2020, a 4.30 meter high memorial created by the sculptor Juan Bejarano in honor of the Mecklenburg resident was inaugurated in Ushuaia.
It shows Plüschow (1886–1931) in front of part of his airplane, a Heinkel HD 24 W biplane. In 1993, Plüscher's base camp was discovered in Patagonia, and from there he started his daring expeditions.
Gunther Plüschow was the first person to cross the Darwin Cordillera on Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn
Source: Bernd Ferstl
The quote
"Yámana means live, breathe, be happy"
Bruce Chatwin (1940–1989) owes Tierra del Fuego its touristic appreciation as a place of longing at the end of the world.
The famous travel novelist also created a literary monument for the Yámana;
the endangered indigenous people.
display
Of around 3,000 Yámana around 1855, only around 80 descendants are still alive today as a result of introduced diseases;
most of them in Villa Ukika on the Chilean Isla Navarino.
The last active native speaker is the 93-year-old Cristina Calderón;
In 2003 it was declared a “living human treasure under the Unesco Convention for the Protection of Intangible Heritage”.
Quirky, record-breaking, typical: You can find more parts of our regional geography series here.
This is where you will find third-party content
In order to interact with or display content from third parties, we need your consent.
Activate external content
I consent to content from third parties being displayed to me.
This allows personal data to be transmitted to third-party providers.
This may require the storage of cookies on your device.
More information can be found here.