Tierra del Fuego National Park was established in 1960. The national park contains the southernmost parts of the Andes Mountains, and southern beech woods dominate the landscape. The most widely distrubuted tree is the Lenga. The park also contains many peat bogs.

Wildlife that I saw while at the park included horses, rabbits, a Fuegian red fox, and an upland goose.

I took a short hike through the woods to a great lookout point. From the lookout point, you could see the Lapataia Bay. The end of the trail was also the end of the Pan American Highway. The other end of the highway is in Alaska.

We left our campsite at Lapataia early in the morning and followed signs to the trail. The start of the trail was somewhat ambiguous so be sure to get some assistance from a park official (if you can find one-try the small store at the campsite)before you set off.

The initial segment of the trail takes is quite hilly, before deciding to head for the shore and taking a fairly, steep downward course.

The rest of the hike follows the water on the rocky, hilly coast. Occasionally, we would hike right along the shore. Other sections of the trail were high above the water in dense beech forest. Occasionally, we hiked past large mounds of shells called middens that are said to have been created by the indigenous inhabitants of the region. We passed several tiny secluded shell strewn beaches where we stopped and enjoyed the solitude. Most of the way we could see the towering mountains hovering over the Beagle Channel.

We picniced on some large boulders in the bay and enjoyed the view of various waterfoul. I remember being stunned by the beauty of the place.

This hike follows the northeastern shore of Lago Roca which is a large, gorgeous lake divided by the border between Argentina and Chile. There are facilities at the Lago Roca campsite.

The path is easy to follow and as it is only occasionally hilly, only a little challenging. At times we scrambled through areas of fallen trees and large moss covered boulders. The only (minor) downside of this hike was that we had to retrace our steps on the same path.

We brought a picnic lunch and ate gazing out at the lake while sitting on fallen trees. The steep mountains on the west side of the lake are crisscrossed with deep alluring ravines. The far end of the lake seems surrounded on three sides by mountains giving the feel of hiking into a canyon. I suppose it looked like any of a number of mountain hikes but the anticipation of reaching a border point seemingly in the middle of nowhere combined with the knowledge that we were hiking in Tierra del Fuego made this a special day.

We camped in two places in the park. The first two nights we camped at Lapataia. The campgrounds are divided by the road. The more secluded sites are across the road from the small store. You'll also have to cross a small creek. These sights are along a place where a river empties into a small bay. There is quite a bit of birdlife in this little estuary. There are no toilets on this side of the campground. It's a 5 minute walk to the nearest toilet. The campsites here are hidden from the road by a small hill so it is very quiet (the road doesn't get much traffic anyway).

Although, there are no toilets the campground at Campa Rio Pipo was even better. During weekends and holidays, daytrippers from Ushuaia park in this area and picnic. At night, we had the campground to ourselves and sat by our fuego (in Tierra del FUEGO!) under the full moon, next to the river... you get the idea, a perfect evening. (The night wasn’t as perfect as we had pitched our tent on some of Tierra Del Fuego's lumpier soil and spent the night tossing and turning trying to get comfortable!)