F
rom Buenos Aires Colin and his wife flew south to
Ushuaia which is on the furthest point south of 5 Tierra del Fuego. They were in what is called Patagonia, which runs from Tierra del Fuego 1,000 miles right up to Bahia Blanco, itself 400 miles south of Buenos Aires. When the area was first discovered by Magellan in 1520 he thought he had discovered a land of Giants 6 or 7 feet high, who fed only on raw meat and wore just animal skins (in fact the locals only averaged 5’11” high, and Spaniards at the time were 5’1” tall – so the local people were hardly giants!). A little later missionaries brought in by the Spanish thought that the locals, given their diet and poor clothing, needed warm clothing, so they imported old clothes from Spain and gave these out – whereupon the locals all caught measles, and promptly died, never having encountered measles before!. Today, in happier times, the locals of Patagonia, – the ‘gauchos’ (Spanish for rustic herdsmen) – now have sheep farming as their main occupation, with wool being a major export. But sheep farming has also caused the growth of another occupation – the manufacture of false metal teeth for the local sheep, their teeth being worn down by the coarse grass and plants that make up much of their diet.
B
elow Patagonia is Tierra del Fuego, the furthest territory of either Argentina or
Chile, but a land shared unequally, Argentina, has the smaller part, and Chile the larger - all of this stemming from a dispute between Chile and Argentina in the 20th century as to who had the rights to Tierra del Fuego, which led to both countries threatening each other with war, this led to both agreeing to a decision by the pope who in 1978 ruled what in fact is the current division of Tierra del Fuego. Argentina, being particularly keen to have a
coast line as near as possible to the Falkland Islands, some 400 miles away and to which Argentina still lays claim as we know only too well. In fact it was from Tierra del
Fuego that the Argentina launched their attack on the Falklands in 1982.
I
nterestingly, the pope’s 1978 decision is reminiscent of that in 1518, when Pope
Alexander divided the world into two halves: all the Pacific Ocean and the west coast of North and South America were given to Spain. All of the East coast of North and South America to Portugal. Hence (apart from the Guianas) the largest land mass on the east of South America is (or was) Portuguese – which we now call Brazil – and all the lands on the west are – or were – Spanish.
F
rom Ushuaia it is possible to go by
ship to Antarctica and to the South is the Beagle Channel, marking the voyage of Charles Darwin’s ship ‘The Beagle’ on its way to the Galapagos Islands in 1835. The Beagle Channel is full of wild
life – such as seals, sea lions – but it is very cold being subject to constant high winds throughout the year.
T S
o the south of Ushuaia is the Cordillera Darwin, (in English, the Darwin mountain
range) which marks the beginnings of the Andes – a mountain chain which is the longest in the world 7,000Km (4,400 miles) long, but only 200Km (124 miles) wide, the mountains rise to an average height of 4,000 metres (13,120feet) and there are many volcanoes along the length of the Andes.
urprisingly, considering its remoteness, the Anthonys found the roads in Tierra del
Fuego well kept and they also discovered that Tierra del Fuego has a magnificent National Park of 1½ million acres, opened in 1937.
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