agustina prigoshin

I woke up to extreme cold this morning and a fog that never lifted. I was concerned about how the fog would effect my plans, but it ended up giving the day a pretty interesting touch.

I jumped on the coolest named-train and traveled to the end of the world.

The End of the World Train, or El Tren del Fin del Mundo, took us through the forrest where prisoners once worked.

In Argentina’s attempt to keep possession of Tierra del Fuego (Chile was trying to claim it), the government decided to use the remote island with its frigid surrounding water as the location for a maximum security prison. Being that no one wanted to voluntarily move to such an island, the government forced its most criminal citizens to populate it. A train was built to transport the prisoners from the prison to the forest where they spent the day cutting down trees. The timber was used for fire wood, rail road tracks and more.

The train tracks reach the tip of the Pan American Highway, this is the highway that travels up South America, through Central America and all the way north to Alaska.

Obviously, we didn’t ride in the same exact train as the prisoners, but they were the same tracks. We rode our five-foot wide, steam engine train through its recovered four-mile track for about an hour.

We passed a “tree cemetary.” It looked like a scene out of a scary movie, with a few standing, but bare, trees left and stumps that resembled tombstones. The prisoners created those tombstone-like stumps when they cut down the trees in the early 1940s.

Beavers outnumber humans in Ushuaia and their damns are another reason trees have, and continue, to die and fall over.

Our first stop was at Pipo’s River. Supposedly, there’s a beautiful waterfall a short hike up the mountain, but due to parts of the ground being frozen, the trail was closed. Regardless, the river, with its snowy/icy sections was beautiful to watch as it twisted through fallen trees. The river got its name from Pipo, a prisoner who tried to escape, but the cold weather stopped him before he got too far. His body was found alongside the river, so it was named after him.

Our next stop was at Roca Lake. Julio Argentino Roca was an Argentine politician, General and two-time president. The lake is surrounded by mountains, but it was difficult to see them through the fog.

The trains’ final stop was really at the end of the world, just 11,000 miles from Antarctica and very close to where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans collide.

After learning about the prisoners that helped inhabit the island, we were really interested in touring the prison, just a few blocks from the hotel.

The prison was constructed with five, two-story corridors that spanned out from a central cafeteria/”playground.” Two of the corridors were closed and two were converted into museums. The first museum was repainted and adorned with articles that told stories about the Argentine military and prisoners. Some cells had mannequins sitting in a cot to resemble the prisoners.

Another corridor/museum housed paintings that depicted the artists’ perception of the growing number of beavers in the region. Some painting showed the beavers taking penguins hostage with shotguns, tying up polar bears and some even showed the beavers eating humans. Clearly, the beavers aren’t very liked.

The last corridor has remained untouched since the prison closed in 1946. The only modification was the removal of all the lights to help preserve it. I visited the prison at night (the sun set at 5 p.m.), so the only light I had was from the street lights that came in through the small cell windows. It was dark, cold and spooky. There were no heaters in this corridor because it’s intended for visitors to see and feel the condition in which the prisoners were kept. Needless to say, I quickly walked to the end of the corridor, peaked around the creepy bathroom and quickly walked out (I spook very easily).

It was a very interesting and educational day.

Next up, El Calafate! Perito Moreno, here I come!!!