Patagonia, the end of the world

Patagonia is a sparsely populated region located at the southern end of South America shared by Argentina and Chile. The region comprises the southern section of the Andes mountains as well as the deserts, pampas and grasslands east of this southern portion of the Andes.

We started our trip in Ushuaia, the capital of the Argentine province of Tierra del Fuego (Land of Fire). Ushuaia is considered the most southern city of the world. 

In one of our trips we saw the panel marking the end of the road No 3 (looked like the world ends there). The road starts in Alaska and ends in that park south of Ushuaia.

Tierra del Fuego is an archipelago with many islands and channels, the most known are The strait of Magellan, Beagle channel and Drake Passage. We did rafting on Beagle channel. It was quite a challenge and I could not take pictures when we had to fight the waters; the three boats of the group were tightened with ropes, just in case where one was drifting away. But after the rough times the water became calm, we untightened the ropes and we were able to take pictures.

One of our trips was to an island with few penguins’ colonies. We could not step on the island but observe them from our pneumatic boat.

We had few trips on the islands around Ushuaia and all of them were beautiful.

​So, where is the name Tierra del Fuego (Land of Fire) coming from? Our guide told us that it was the Magellan crew that gave this name to the land. Passing through the channels south of the continent they saw many fires. The story says that the aboriginal people did not have clothes, it was useless because of so much rain. So, they had fires at all time to get warm.

In our last day in Ushuaia we witnessed a festival.

Messing with nature always has consequences. Argentina imported 50 beavers from Canada in 1946 (hoping to develop fur industry). They do not have natural predators in Patagonia and today they are more that 100,000, other estimates say 200,000. They are a natural disaster, and the number growing even if there are scouts payed to kill as many as they can. See more at: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver_eradication_in_Tierra_del_Fuego