Ushuaia (Fin del Mundo) More

Today we visited Tierra del Fuego National Park with a different private guide. It is named fuego not because of volcanoes which is what we had thought, but because the native inhabitants built so many fires to keep themselves warm as they wore no clothing. The European settlers saw all the smoke from their boats, didn't see the people, and named it land of fires (almost called it land of smoke). Nowadays the air is so clean it could be bottled--in fact our guide told us that a visitor from Mexico City (smog heaven)on a different day asked the guide for a bottle of pollution because he was in withdrawal in such a pristine place!

We canoed on a river that flowed into Beagle Channel and saw incredible sites. We took the canoe out at a point which was the end of the pan-American highway (starts in Alaska). Although we were the only ones in the river and channel, there were many tour groups at the take out point, including the Princess cruise ship which we will be taking on 3/6! We then had a catered lunch (many appetizers, bass, baked potato, fruit, vino, etc). Followed that up with a 4 hr hike of the fuego forest and coast side of the channel. Very lovely scenery as they do not clear the trees but rather let them decompose on their own so the place is extremely lush. It takes 500 yrs for a tree to rot because of the long cold season and no termites.