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Published: February 1st 2011
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Ushuaia
When the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges wrote his beautiful ´The Circular Ruins´ in 1940, he did not know my daughter. First because my daughter is not famous and secondly because my daughter had not been born yet (even I was not born). He describes how a man slips down from a boat on an Island and how he phantasize a person so strongly, that the person really becomes alive. The only ones who know the person is not real are the person himself and the man who phantasize him. When my daughter was young she also phantasized a person. She called him Yamana and her phantasy was so strong that my (younger) son really believed in it.
Now we are in Tierra del Fuego it appeares the Yamana´s really exist. Robert Fitz Roy, captain of the Beagle discovered them in 1828. He took four of them to England to teach them the western civilisation. That means to speak English and to eat with cutleries. Four years later he brought them back to spread out the westen civilisation under the´wild´ tribes. It was a big experiment. And a big disaster. Some months later the ´civilised´ Yamana´s were wild
as never before.
Charles Darwin (who was aboard on the second expedition) was shocked to see the wild Yamana´s. How could such a people exist and how could they survive under such a harsh conditions? Tierra del Fuego, El Fin del Mundo, the End of the World, we are 14,000 km from home. Well, if this is the end of the world it is not that bad. We find it beautiful. The day of Judgement may come. But James Cook was not that positive. ´There is no place in nature that cause more savage or terrifying sights than this´, he writes around 1770.
We arrived here with Aerolineas Argentinas from Buenos Aires. It took about 3 hours and a half. In Buenos Aires it was unbearable hot, but here, in the (excellent) Hostel La Posta, the heating is on. It is cold and we see the snowcapped mountains around us. Ushuaia, the southermost city in the world, is only 1200 kilometers from Antarctica. Still we are far from the South Pole, which begins at a latitude of 66 1/2 degree (Ushuaia lies at 55 degrees). We see trees and there is a lot of rain.
When Fitz
Roy sailed the Beagle Channel he realized it was an open connection between the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean. They baptised it with the name of their ship. About 25,000 years ago it was still a glacier. Then climate changed. It became warmer, the ice melted and the land rose, because the weight of 1500 meters ice was not there anymore. When finally the sea rose the valley, formed by the glacier, filled with seawater. The Beagle channel was born.
When we make a trip with a catamaran over the Beagle channel we are impressed. The landscape is absolutely overwhelming. We see Magelhaen pinguins, the shy Gentoo Pinguin, South Sealions, Blue eyed Cormorants, Turkey Vulture, Dolphin Gull, Kelp Gull and South American Tern. When we make a hike in the breathtaking Parc National de Tierra del Fuego we see even more animals, like the Southern Caracara, the Kelp Goose, Crested Duck and Chilean Skua. The borders of the Beagle channel are covered by woods dominated by the Evergreen Beech. On it we find the Indian´s bread, a parasite. The Yamana´s ate it fresh. We see several orchids and beard lichens.
It takes more than 17 hours to drive with
the bus from Ushuaia to Calafate, in the south of Patagonia. Chili lies in between. It is a pity they did not make a bridge over it. The Chileans take the opportunity to check you carefully, specially on food. There is a special building and inside is a big machine to check your luggage. The harvest of our bus was not big.: 2 potatoes (ours), 2 banana´s and 4 appels. We see our first lama´s.
After some hours we pass the Street of Magelhaen. It takes about half an hour to cross it with a ferry. From the boat we see the black and white Commerson´s dolphins. They join us and jump out of the sea. Magelhaen discovered in 1520 this passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, which was so important for the trade of Spain. Now we are on the mainland we see also rhea´s, the ostrich like birds. I guess these are the rhea´s Darwin ate. While he was eating he suddenly realized it was a special bird. He stopped eating and saved the rest. You can still see the remnants of his dinner in the Natural History Museum in London.
Magelhaen was the one
who saw the mysterious smoke ashore without seeing people. He called it Land of Smoke. Later they realized it came from the fires of the inhabitants, the Yamana´s, and they called it Land of Fire: Tierra del Fuego.
It reminds me once more of the story of Jorge Borges. In the end there are big fires on the Island. People flee for it, but there is one man who does not burn. That is the man who is phantasized. He cannot burn. When finaly the fire reaches the phantasizer, he notices he also cannot burn.
After 17 hours travelling we arrive in El Calafate.
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Gré en Ruud
non-member comment
natuur
Wat een voorrecht om zo omringd te zijn door deze overweldigende natuur. Zulke schoonheid vergeet je nooit meer. We hebben gehoord dat hoe zuidelijke je komt hoe indrukwekkender het wordt. Aan jullie foto's te zien klopt dit wel.