At the end of the world, as they call it, you can find the national park Tierra del Fuego, land of fire. I’m not sure where the name comes from, but there are signs everywhere saying you can’t make a fire. Fire has devastated much of Patagonia’s national parks and I can imagine the strong winds here make it hard to control them. But fire is not why I am here. I’m going on an adventure with my tent. For the steep price of 35 euro you may enter the park. However, camping is free and you’re allowed to stay for 48 hours without paying extra if you camp. So I happily carried in my tent and some supplies.
My Uber dropped me off at the park entrance, where the ticket office was a bit crazy because a bunch of buses had arrived. I waited and asked my questions once the crowd was gone. Payments made and camping registration done, I walked to the start of my first trail: senda Costera. Buses and cars raced past me, leaving a cloud of dust. Luckily there soon was a little trail on the side, through the forest. The coastal trail starts in Ensenada bay, where you can find Argentina’s Southernmost post office (excluding Antarctica, if that’s even Argentinian). Unfortunately it was closed. It was crowded in the bay and a bunch of people started walking the same trail, none with camping gear.
It’s a very pleasant walk through the forest, going up and down over little hills, passing the most gorgeous beaches. It had stopped raining and the sun showed itself more and more. It was so scenic because each bay was different, with rocks, pebbles or sand. The forest came all the way to the water and on the other side you could see Chile’s snowy mountaintops. Seagulls were walking on the water’s edge, which was covered with mussels or some other shellfish. I had a nice picnic in one of the bays and totally calmed down. Some people in the hostel had told me they didn’t think the national park was worth going, but this walk was wonderful.
Finishing the coastal walk, I still had to reach the campground at Laguna Verde. For part of it there was a trail, part of it was on the dirt road, officially still Ruta 3, a highway from the national park all the way to Buenos Aires. At Laguna Verde I found a lot of big vehicles, jeeps and overland camper trucks. But behind the parking lot was a path with grassy fields around it, where I found an empty plot for my tent. There were some other tents, but I couldn’t see them as they were behind trees or little hills. There were toilets at the parking, but for some reason they were locked at night.
With a lighter backpack I did some walks in the area. There were lots of shorter trails that you could kind of combine into a loop. I visited Lapataia bay, but for me it wasn’t as nice as the bays I’d seen before. Then I went to the short senda Castorera. Castor is Spanish for beaver and the walk led to beaver paradise. The animals were introduced here for their fur, although this industry never took off. The beavers however thrived and spread throughout Patagonia, damaging the forest and changing the landscape. There were some people with huge cameras, so I waited until they started taking pictures. Indeed, I saw two beavers swimming around, quite special to see. Via Laguna Negra I came back to my tent. Although there was a beautiful lagoon closeby, I spent the evening in my tent. There were too many bloodthirsty mosquitoes flying around.
The next day I woke up to find my hiking boot three meters away from my tent. I decided not to think too much about how it got there and counted my blessings that it hadn’t rained much. I wanted to climb to the Cerro Guanaco. There were some clouds, but the weather looked alright. However, this is Ushuaia, where you can get all seasons in a day. So as I climbed up through the forest, it started to rain. It wasn’t much and I was mostly covered by the trees. This was a tough trail and you even had to register for doing it. After just over an hour I reached the tree line. The middle section of the walk was simply hilarious. There was a peat bog field and a lot of mud. So you had no idea which ground was solid and where you would sink in like quicksand. It was slipping and sliding, poking the ground with my poles.
Eventually I reached the other side, where I found some other people. Up until then I had been worried about there not being anyone out there. There was a big hill full of scree and rocks, waiting for me to climb it. It was still more than 1 km and all of it was up. The view was great, seeing the peat field stretching out, but clouds were moving in. They made it to the top much faster than I did and when I finally arrived my view was completely white! I laughed about it with a French couple on their honeymoon and we took some pictures. As I was getting a snack it started to hail. It was freezing up there and once again I couldn’t wait for the weather to clear up.
We all started walking down. The next people were on the way up and asked how much further. You couldn’t really see the top. I was disappointed, but suddenly it got lighter. Slowly the clouds drifted apart, opening up the view like curtains in the theater. It was kind of nice. I had no idea what was around me until then. You could see the water and the surrounding mountains. It was fabulous. By the time I stood at the bottom, all the clouds had moved out. A blue sky revealed itself. Only 2 hours before I had stood there in that hail storm. I shrugged. That’s the adventure. You win some, you lose some. But my experience is unique and I’m glad I had it.
I walked back to my tent to pack up. I had no idea how I was going to get back to the city, but there was some kind of bus stop next to the camp ground. I decided to wait for an hour to see what happened. After about 10 minutes a little van stopped to ask if I had booked their service. I hadn’t, but that wasn’t a problem. I could pay cash and get dropped in the city. He even stopped in the street of my hostel, so I wouldn’t have to walk back all the way from the port. So everything worked out super well. Like magic.
