Today we took an organised tour to the Tierra del Fuego National Park. We started the day on a ride on the Tren del Fin del Mundo (End of the World), which was a narrow gauge railway built by the prisoners in Ushuaia to take them to the forest to cut wood. The original tracks were laid around 1910 in wood at a gauge of 60cm. These were replaced with iron rails 10 years later at a gauge of 50cm, and it is a part of this track that is still used today as a tourist attraction. The steam engine pulling our carriages was built in 2006 in Buenos Aires, the first steam train ever to have been completely built in Argentina. There was also another steam engine running that had been imported from Daventry, England in 1999. The journey to the terminus took about 45 minutes including a stop for photographs and a rather atmospheric stretch through the tree cemetery where the prisoners had cut down trees for wood and only the stumps remained.
We were met at the terminus by our driver and guide to go further in to the park. We made some stops for photos and enjoyed several walks along the shore of the Beagle Channel and in to the forest. We saw Kelp geese, white swans with black necks, and at one stop, a young Fuegian red fox. We were also taken to see a beaver dam. Beavers were introduced here in 1946 and have colonised very successfully, having no natural predators in the water. The Park marks the southern end of the PanAmerican highway No.3 which stretches 17848km to Alaska.
The temperature today was closer to the summer seasonal average of 9 degrees and we needed to layer up. We were spoiled yesterday when, in windless conditions, temperatures soared to 17 degrees and we were able to peel off the layers. Winters here are milder than elsewhere in the South and, due to the proximity of both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, only average a balmy minus 10 degrees!
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