Reader's Adventure: Journey to the Land of Fire

Moira Smart visits Tierra del Fuego, a magical archipelago off the southern tip of South America

In 1520, when Magellan discovered the Strait passage later named after him, he saw on the southern shores columns of smoke from the Indian fires and so this remote archipelago became known as the Land of Fire.

Tierra del Fuego is one of the most beautiful, wild and magical places on Earth.

Excited jabbering in different languages filled the air as our plane broke through heavy clouds to reveal the choppy waters of the Beagle Channel and the snow-capped Andes.

Our welcome to the capital, Ushuaia, was the icy wind that whipped us as we left the airport, giving us a taste of the fierce westerlies that cause the permanently leaning "flag trees". The Martial Mountains stand guard over the city with its deep bay, which hosts expedition ships preparing for Antarctica, among other places.

Although the indigenous tribes had inhabited the Isla Grande for thousands of years and explorers and scientists, including Captain FitzRoy and Charles Darwin in the 1830s, came and went, the first permanent white settler was Thomas Bridges in 1871. This devoted man of the Anglican mission based in the Falklands had been sailing the Beagle Channel and working with the Yaghan people.

My destination the next day was Estancia Harberton, the former home of this same Thomas Bridges. The land was a gift of thanks from the Argentine president for Bridges' 30 years' dedicated service, working among the Yaghan and with shipwrecked sailors of the Cape Horn area.

It was the first farm on Tierra del Fuego and stands on the banks of the Beagle Channel. No longer a working ranch, it is today a historical site and nature reserve.

We travelled along Route 3, past the jagged Mount Olivia, along the Tierra Mayor Valley where cross-country skiing and other winter sports take place in the shadow of awe-inspiring mountain peaks. You could follow this route 3 056km north to Buenos Aires or 17 825km to Alaska. We turned south onto a gravel road, winding through forests and alongside streams, until we reached the Harberton ranch.

As this is a protected site, guests are escorted on informative walks and coastguards are stationed at the little harbour to make sure only a certain number of people visit the penguin breeding colony. Two whale jaw bones form an arch over the entrance to the gardens of the homestead. The sheep-shearing shed and boathouse remain, as if waiting for the workers to return from lunch.

Most fascinating is the Acatushun Museum, a working laboratory for the study of marine mammals and birds of southernmost South America. About 500m from the main house, it is the result of years of scientific research by its founder, Natalie Goodall, who is married to a descendant of Thomas Bridges.

Here, university students collect and study animals stranded on the beaches, obtaining samples and cleaning skeletons.

My charming abode was a room in The Old Shepherd's House, with only green grass and pebble beach between me and the waters of the Beagle Channel. The silence was exquisite as I watched the sun set over the silvery waters, where a pair of flightless steamer ducks glided along.

It was hard to imagine the wild seas that had claimed many lives and the harsh living conditions of Thomas Bridges's family.

His son, Lucas, wrote a book The Uttermost Part of the Earth, which is his remarkable account of growing up as the first white settlers among the Fuegian tribes.

With patience, perseverance, care and kindness, they learnt the rich expressive language of the Yaghan Indians and to understand their fascinating culture - the autonomous development of a society isolated for centuries. Darwin sadly labelled them the most abject and miserable creatures.

The next day, the sun shone and the early autumn air was crisp and cold. A guided walk around the peninsula introduced me to the native vegetation, birds, the scarce land mammals and breathtaking views of the Beagle Channel and its islands. As I rested my weary legs, the only sound I heard was the feral horses, grazing on the lush grass in front of my cottage.

That night, the weather did a complete turnaround. The wind howled and the rain beat on my window, giving my imagination flight to shipwrecks and pirates of a bygone era. The morning revealed that snow had fallen and the landscape was a ghostly grey and white.

It was time to leave the wild, rugged beauty of this last frontier. Local folklore says: "He who eats the fruit of the calafate will one day return." Guess what I did.

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