The End of the World

Ushuaia, Argentina - The End of the World

Really?

Ushuaia, Argentina.  El Fin Del Mundo.  The end of the world.  From the harbor you see a wall that says:

"USHUAIA end of the world, beginning of everything"

They call Ushuaia the end of the world because it is the southern-most city on planet earth.  They have a lighthouse called "The Lighthouse at the end of the world" and you can buy all manor of trinkets that say "End of the World" on the front (and "Made in China" on the back).

For Mandy the end of the world was the beginning of mental joy.  She was thrilled to get off the ship and walk around on dry land.  For me, it was a pleasant visit with memories that found my mind challenging the city's famous tag line. This post is about why.

First of all, here's what the bottom of South America looks like:

Argentina is shown in yellow.  The brown country on the west (and south) side of the country is Chile.  It is bordered on the east by Uruguay and Paraguay.  To the north is the Bolivian border.  For this discussion I don't care about the north or east, but let's consider Chile.

The town of Ushuaia is on Tierra del Fuego which is the largest one of many islands at the southern end of south America.  The eastern half of the Island is Argentina and the western half is Chile. 

Angentina / Chile Border in Yellow

The image above shows Tierra del Fuego with a yellow border drawn to show you what is Argentina and what is Chile.  The photo below circles the Chilean portion in red.

Ok, so now you've got a lay of the land.  The waterway below Tierra del Fuego is the Beagle channel.  Let's take a closer look at the channel.

Our trip to Ushuaia required we sail on the southern side of the Beagle Channel because the water is deeper there (and our ship was quite large).  For this reason we had to have a Chilean pilot aboard (to keep us from sinking our ship in Chile's channel).  About 40 minutes prior to arriving in Ushuaia we stopped at Port William Chile to offload the Chilean pilot and pick up one from Argentina.

(For those of you who don't track such things, big ships have to hire local pilots who know the conditions of the sea floor to guide them in and out of ports.  This is done at nearly every port.)

Port William, Chile is a picturesque little town nestled in between some beautiful mountains on the south side of the Beagle Channel.  Here's a picture I took of Port William as we changed pilots.

Port William, Chile

Some of you are racing ahead to where I'm going here.  How could Port William be a town six miles south of the southern-most city on earth?  To that my response is simply:

"Don't get ahead of yourself, you ain't seen nothing yet".

As you already saw, Port William, Chile is six miles south of the end of the world but if we zoom back a bit with Google Earth we see that Cape Horn Chile (the true southern-most point in South America) is about 90 miles south of Port William.  It has full time residents and a lighthouse that is tended (full time) by the Chilean Navy.

So...

That means there is a lighthouse close to 100 miles south of the lighthouse at the end of the world.  Hopefully you head didn't explode quite yet, because I'm not quite done.  Two brothers (Bartolome and Gonzalo de Dordal) were sailing on a Portuguese expedition in 1619 and nearly 400 years to the day prior to Mandy and I arriving they found this:

Diego Ramirez Islands

The cosmographer on board was named Diego Ramirez so obviously they would name these islands that are 68 miles south east of Cape Horn after him.  Fast forward 400 years and here's what you will find on these islands:

The Settlement 150 miles south of the southernmost place on earth 

You will also find this...

The lighthouse 150 miles south of the lighthouse at the end of the world

...so anyway, I'm not going to try to convince you one way or the other but I ask you this question.  When I sent my little grandson a sweater vest that had a little penguin on it with the caption:

Ushuaia  El Fin Del Mundo.
(hey, the kid's smart and I'm going to make him work for it)

What did I do?  Did I:

1. Set him up to walk around sporting a bald face lie?
   
2. Agree with the folks in Argentina regardless of what the goobers in Chile believe
   
            or
   
3. Dip into logic that starts out with "Hey, it works for Santa Clause so ..."