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lake below. In Punta Arenas, our journey along Chilean Ruta 9, known as the‘ Ruta du Fin del Mundo’, continued with the ferry that took us to the island of Tierra del Fuego, in the small town of Porvenir.
When Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan found the strait that allowed him to circumnavigate the farthest reaches of the American continent, as Pigafetta, chronicler of the expedition, reported, he observed long columns of smoke coming from that large island. The fires that the Yamana indigenous people used for warmth, cooking, and communication prompted the expert navigator to name this land at the edge of the world " Tierra del Fuego."
Even today, settlements on this land were small and sporadic, and despite its surface area comparable to that of Sicily, its inhabitants numbered approximately 130,000. If this figure included the King penguins of the Penguino Rey Natural Reserve, the numbers would grow dramatically. We had them in our heads since we set out, and then we found them before us. Who hadn’ t dreamed of seeing them dangling and diving? They were exactly as you might imagine, so similar to those in the cartoons we watched as children.
Then the last border crossing on the way down south; in Rio Grande we met up with our French friends and decided to do the last leg together.
Ruta 3 was as straight as a bolt, and watching Domi lean over on his T7, I realised how strong the wind was. All we remembered of Ushuaia
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