Patagonian Peregrination Part 3

The rest of DAY 2 Almost!


After finishing my ride on the Tren del Fin del Mundo I ended up in Tierra del Fuego Parque Nacional, again for my non-Spanish speakers that is Land of Fire National Park. This place is AMAZING!! It is a combined effort of Chile and Argentina to preserve some ridiculous number of pristine hectares of mountains and forests. And they really do preserve it. There are certain places that are designated camping grounds but other than that there is NOTHING and it is IMMACULATE!! Everything from the trees, to the grass, to the water looks like it is straight out of a commercial about what the world looked like before people.


Tierra del Fuego is home to a large amount of the native animals of Ushuaia. Most of the native animals are types of birds, but they do have some other species like gray foxes. A lot of the animals of Tierra del Fuego were actually introduced species. Some like the rabbits and European foxes came over like they did in North America and thrived but eventually assimilated into the habitat. There was one animal however that really effed stuff up from an ecological perspective though.


Here comes the environmentalist in me....ready for it.....so the greedy people who helped establish Ushuaia and Patagonia as productive part of Argentina thought that one industry that could thrive here was FUR. That's right PETA.....Ushuaia was supposed to be a fur industrial complex. So they shipped in a bunch of beaver thinking that they would thrive the same way they did in Canada. Unfortunately, what no one thought of is the fact that summers in Ushuaia are actually warmer than summers in Canada. This means the beavers got lighter and thinner coats which suck for making a warm fur-lined jacket. What were the beavers good for? Oh that's right making dams to protect themselves against natural predators like wolves and bears...wait what's that you say there are no wolves and bears in Patagonia.....and the dams are really just stopping the mountain springs and causing destruction of entire forests and therefore everything that lives within it???? What a dilemma we have caused.....stupid humans! So now in order to preserve the natural habitat that is Tierra del Fuego there is a joint effort on behalf of the Argentine and Chilean governments to eradicate the beaver in this area.....what does that mean exactly? Find a beaver, kill it up, and all the day no one really cares. I know that sounds terrible but that truly is the problem with invasive species. So until someone figures out how to get rid of them or help them co-exist in their new environment that is what has to happen.....I have dubbed this the BEAVER PROBLEM....just cause I think it's a funny name.


Well now that I have told you that wonderful peace of disturbing news let me put up some pictures of Tierra del Fuego.....

This is a shout out to the Yámana...the native people that lived here before the Argentines sent down their prisoners....I always feel a subtle pang of guilt whenever I talk about extinguished Native American tribes.

I learned how to use the landscape tool on my phone....get ready I have a lot of these now!

Reminds me A LOT
of one of the mountains in Bali actually, isn't that funny.

I have been to the end of the PanAmerican Highway!!!! What what!?!? So cool!

Those are some of my pictures from Tierra del Fuego. The place is absolutely AMAZING!!! If you ever get the chance you have to check it out. I mean getting a chance to hike in the Andes Mountains, which because of how South I was went from East to West instead of North to South, just a lot of FUN!!