Geography 101: Usuhaia

The city of Ushuaia is located in the island of Tierra del Fuego in the southern tip of South America. See the orange arrow in the map.

In the native language of the yamán aborigene, Ushuaia means ush (at the bottom of) and waia (a bay). The city was founded in 1884 by some lunatic who thought it would be a good idea to build a city 620 miles north of Antartica.

With an estimated population of 60,000 inhabitants, it is the southernmost city in the world. There are other smaller towns south of Usuhaia but the technical definition of city in Argentina and Chile requires a stable population of at least 5,000 people.

Therefore, everything in Ushuaia is considered to be "at the end of the world". For example, you can find the train at the end of the world. As you may imagine, it does not run very often so you can take a nap on its tracks while waiting for it. There is also the jail at the end of the world and a replica of The Lighthouse at the End of World (which incidentally, the original was not located in Ushuaia but in an island west of the city and it inspired Jules Verne to write his famous novel) . In a nutshell, everything is advertised as "the end of the world".

The food in the city is very good and pricey -remember the end of the world thingy. One of the specialties in the island is centolla (king crab). It is one nasty looking animal but tastes really well with potatoes and onions.

We took a boat to travel along the Beagle channel where we saw penguins and sea lions.

We hiked to the top of the Cerro Martial to see the Martial glacier and to have a wonderful

view of the city and the bay from the mountain top. In the picture you can see the city behind us.

We visited beautiful lakes hidden between mountains like Lago Escondido (hidden lake, very original name) and Lago Fagnano.

There is outstanding beauty in Ushuaia and we tried to see as much as we could. We couldn't visit as many places as we wanted but we can always come back in the future. After all, it's not the end of the world...