Ushuaia

The boat runs down the channel past sea lion rocks and a cormorant island. It turns at a red and white lighthouse and comes back.

The national road ends here and a sign marks the spot. A coastal path runs 8 kilometres along the shore.

A narrow gauge line that convicts used to haul timber was relaid and now runs again. The carriages are small, so boarding means stooping and the windows sit low.

The history of a town founded by sending convicts survives in the prison itself. One wing of cells was left untouched to show the state they were in.

Twenty minutes up from town by car reaches a viewpoint below the ice. From there the channel and the city spread out underfoot.

Gentoo and Magellanic penguins raise their young on the same island. Only a fixed number may land and the rest watch from the boat.

The oldest ranch in this region was founded by a missionary family in 1886. A small museum of marine mammal bones stands on the same ground.

Two hours on a muddy path reaches a jade coloured glacier lake. The route passes several places where beavers have felled the trees.

Ships bound for Antarctica begin a three day crossing from this pier. A board at its head gives the distance still to run.

A timber walk crosses peat bog and continues until the bay runs out. The water runs brown because decaying moss has coloured it.

A small history museum occupying an old bank on Maipu Street, opposite the harbour. Indigenous tools, a ship's figurehead salvaged from a wreck and the island's stuffed birds each get their own room. When rain sets in, combine it with the prison museum.

A small museum on the Yamana, who lived by canoe around the Beagle Channel. Models show how they endured that cold sea in almost no clothing, relying on seal fat and fire. Stop in before a channel boat trip and the shoreline reads differently.

Route 3 crosses Garibaldi Pass and Lago Escondido appears below, ringed by forest. A little further on comes Lago Fagnano, stretching away past the Chilean border. Pulling over at the pass lookout is what the drive is really for.

A tiny fishing village on the Beagle Channel, reached by gravel road east of the city. A handful of houses double as restaurants, boiling king crab landed that day. Across the water, Chile's Puerto Williams looks close enough to touch.

Ski slopes a drive of thirty-odd minutes out of the city, promoted as the southernmost resort on Earth. Lifts run through the austral winter, which brings northern-hemisphere racers here for summer training. So close to the sea, the snow lands damp and heavy.

A full-day hike from the forest north of town, over peat bog and rock to a lake below the glacier. Ice that has calved from the glacier drifts on its surface. Trail markings are sparse, so many walkers hire a guide.

Some 20 minutes' drive eastward from town lies a broad valley that collects deep snow. In winter, husky kennels run sled rides and snowshoe walks; in summer the same ground is for hiking and riding. You get time to greet the dogs before setting off.

A trail inside Tierra del Fuego National Park that starts at the shore of Lago Roca and heads straight for the summit. A boggy peat stretch midway calls for waterproof boots. From the top, the Beagle Channel, the lake and the Chilean peaks spread out at once.