The dawn of the city of Ushuaia

The vast desert lands located at the south of Rio Negro and Rio Neuquen worried the authorities of Buenos Aires only because of the quarrelsome Indians (Mapuches) they sheltered, guilty of ceaseless "malones" in the middle of the Pampa's estancieros lands.
Beyond, still coarse maps mentioned the existence of a more or less triangular drawing island , that the sailors of Magellan had baptized in 1520 "Tierra del Fuego", without knowing that fires in question emanated from encampments of Indians established there for thousand years.They were called Onas (or Selkman) and Yamanas. Contrary to their cousins of North, they were peaceful, lived hunting and fishing on a territory to which they had given, for a long time already, the name of "Karukinka".
Other ships followed the passage of the Magellan one's during following centuries, but direct contacts with the white man were rare. It happened that certain generations were aware of his existence only through tales of the oldest.
But during this year 1884, if oldest remembered the passage of the “Beagle", 50 years earlier, youngest had got into habit of keeping close to English missionaires like Pastors Mathews and Bridges and other men overcome by goldfever, settled in the north of the island.Did they understand the consequence of the gesture achieved by Commander Augusto Laserre at the head of the Argentinian Army South Atlantic task force, on this 12th of October : that this flag set up in this bay they used to call Ushuaïa, meant the birth of new city, and by inches their people death ?

Natural photographs taken without filter at 5h30 a.m. on October 4, 2006

A page of the “HMS Beagle” logbook

Savages, very dirty, idiots! no understand.” Jemmy Button exclaims. All around him, hundreds of Yamanas try to touch him, to smell the strange flavour emanating from this small fellow they do not recognize. Only wearing filth that protects them from the cold, they upset this dandy and the girl who stands at his sides.Fuegia Basket is still thinking of this day she was presented at the King and the Queen. Nervously, she makes turn a sunshade above her head and mumble to these “savages” who were her brothers, in English she reminds : “I, forgotten speak Yamana”. Beside them, stand three other strange creatures landed from a canot much larger than those used by Yamanas: Robert Fitz Roy, captain of the brig HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin, a young man that Jemmy and Fuegia have immediately hated, and Pastor Mathews who reads these so beautiful stories that they do not all understand.

They all left the port of Devonport in England, on December 27, 1831, nearly one year ago. The Captain Fitz Roy was commissioned to continue the work of chronometric and topographic readings made by the Captain King between 1826 and 1830. He makes cast anchor this afternoon of December 17, 1832, in a bay the English maps of the time mention under the name of “Bay of Good Success” close to the Navarino island.On this island will end an experiment involuntarily started 3 years earlier, during the first Beagle expedition. At that time, a group of Yamanas had seized a small whale-boat they found useful to go to fish. The Captain, to recover this property of “His Majesty”, had not hesitated to take 4 Indians as hostages.The aforementioned hostages found very pleasant the fact of washing and dressing themselves. So that they stayed on board, quickly becoming the mascots of the crew which gave to them ridiculous names. When they arrived in England they became the crowd attraction. Showered with gifts, they were the guests of the London best society salons.Feeling guilty to have transformed them into fair attractions, Robert Fitz Roy thus seizes the opportunity of a second voyage to take them home with Pasteur Mathews in charge to found a mission on the island which faces the current site of the Ushuaïa city. Thus it explains this surrealist episode of Beagle expedition…

Thanks to Jean Raspail for this anecdote drawn from his book "Adios, Tierra del Fuego" Ed.Albin Michel

Back to Tierra del Fuego (Cerro Castor)

We are at the beginning of October. The ski season is finished everywhere else in the southern hemisphere. Except in Ushuaïa. There, some fans, and a privileged few, come to benefit from the last snows suspended from the glaciar valleys sides of the Tierra del Fuego.At the side of Ruta 3 which leads to Rio Gallegos, a human dimensions ski complex has developed for 6 years, named without originality Cerro Castor, in connection with the hundred thousands of these small awkwardly introduced rodents, and which devastate the surrounding forest of lengas.A few days earlier, snowboard France team passed to prepare the season which will start in the northern hemisphere. Under the expert glance of ten Ushuaïa freestylers, they make fun of “half pipes” and “pro jump” in an all in concavities relief. they left a pure trace in the powdered snow, and figures in the spirits, which it will have to reproduce at any price.Part of the privileged youth of Ushuaïa practises these new feelings with much of virtuosity and unconcern within surroundings they know by heart, challenging themselves to the possible frontier.In the evening, after having removed the “baggy”, they descend the street San Martin showing to the girls faces of those who were there, of those who did it, telling the “1080°” they made and that nobody saw.
Cerro Castor ski center :
www.cerrocastor.com
(00 54) 29 0149-9301

Bahia Lapataia

Ruta 40 which skirts the Cordillera since the Bolivian border, stopped in Rio Gallegos.
Ruta 3, came from Buenos Aires by the Atlantic coast, continued until the end, thus granting to itself the title of road most in the south of the world.
After having crossed Ushuaia, it uncoils its last bends in the National park of the Tierra del Fuego, comes up against the right layout of the Chilean border and throws, such a river at full stroke, in water of the Lapataia bay in the meddle of the Channel Beagle.
The last kilometers coast along dark water of Lago Roca, cross the wet forests of "lengas", "nires" and "coihues", tries to avoid infested torrents of beavers.

Ushuaia, dream and reality

The only name of Ushuaia, synonymous with end of the world, makes dream. Unfortunately the dream partly made place with the mercenary attitude.
Exploiting the appelation "fin del mundo" declined on the "mugs", the "tee-shirt" or other memories of a more or less sure taste, the tradesmen of the street San Martin or those of the port, between 2 hotels, try to secure throughout the year an income which enables them to live in this place distant from all. How to be upset with them?
Obliged passage of the croisierists specialized in the voyages in southern seas, Ushuaia sees unloading - almost each day - troops of American, European tourists or Japanese in search of adventure to few expenses (way of speaking).
The few lines which I have just written on the subject under hear - you will have understood it - a certain disappointment. It is true that we had made the error to precede this stopover by unforgettable places (see the article on the Glacier Perito Moreno and Fitz Roy).
The stays which propose the "tour operators", of 2 or 3 days on average, pathetically and are unbearably marked out: the obliged points of passage are the lighthouse of "Eclaireurs" and the visit of the park "Tierra del Fuego", water-bus and circuit in the bus, group made up.
Even if it is undeniable that these sites have a certain pace. If one seeks the strange one and the exceptional one, it is for a long time to have better budgeted for it: a navigation towards Cape Horn, an adventure in the Antarctic of a few days, cost at least 3000 $ per anybody.
Ushuaia lets however show through this indefinable impression of end of the world and legends. The proximity of mythical places like Cape Horn or the Magellan Strait, is maybe the reason. The phantom of grand sailors haunts the carcasses of failed ships.
The memory of forwardings Magellan (1520) or Beagle (1832-1836) is intensely present. History of men at the same time simple and exceptional, like Pasteur Thomas Bridge (1886), which left us in heritage the only trace which remains of the Yamanas Indians, in a dictionary English-Yamanas, the presence of the lighthouse of the Eclaireurs which still testifies to the spirit builder and universal of the French, are as many points which counterbalance the first impression.