Day 8 · December 27, 2027 · Ushuaia, Argentina
Magellan’s men sailed past this coast in 1520 and saw fires burning along the shore. That is why the island is called Land of Fire.
The people living here kept fires burning almost constantly. They built them on the beaches and carried them in their canoes, in a climate that stays cold most of the year.
The Spanish wrote Tierra del Fuego on the chart, and mapmakers kept it.
The southernmost city in the world
Ushuaia sits on the north shore of the Beagle Channel. The Martial mountains rise straight up behind the town.
Argentina calls it the southernmost city in the world. Chile points at Puerto Williams, across the channel, which is smaller and farther south. The argument has run for decades.
Ushuaia was founded in 1884, and for much of its early life it was a prison town. The convicts built the streets, the buildings, and the railway.
That railway still runs. It is now the southernmost working railway on earth, and it carries tourists along the route the prisoners were marched.
The prison itself is a museum today, down by the water.
The Beagle Channel and Charles Darwin
The Beagle Channel takes its name from HMS Beagle. She surveyed this coastline between 1826 and 1830. She came back a few years later carrying a young naturalist named Charles Darwin.
The channel is one of three ways around the bottom of South America. The Strait of Magellan is the second. The Drake Passage is the third, and you will be on it tomorrow.
Boat trips run from the pier out to the Les Éclaireurs lighthouse. They pass sea lions, cormorants, and a penguin colony on Isla Martillo.
Centolla, the southern king crab
Centolla is southern king crab, pulled out of the channel.
Restaurants here serve it plain, in soup, and baked with cheese. Book a table before you arrive, because the good places fill up on cruise days in December.
Next: crossing the Drake Passage
Tomorrow the ship leaves the channel and turns into open water.
Nothing stands between here and Antarctica except about six hundred miles of the Drake Passage.
