We chose the only day of our 4 night stay in Ushuaia to go to the Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego on Friday when the wind forecast was moderate and we stopped first at the train station where you could catch a train ride into the National Park. We took pictures of the trains departing and left one of our stickers there. We then continued on the dirt road to the National Park entrance, bought our tickets and rode to the end of Ruta 3 and the iconic sign of Bahia Lapataia where we took pictures and placed another one of our stickers. We then walked the short loop walk with great views over the Bay and interesting information about the local indigenous people of the tribe of the Yámana which once lived here and were nomadic seafarers in their canoes made of bark who kept fires burning on land in temporary shelters and in their canoes which is why Ferdinand Magellan named the place “Tierra del Fuego” (Land of Fire).

We found a nice grassy area near a stream away from the main track where we sat down to eat our lunch. We were soon joined by a group of wild horses – 1 stud, 2 mares and 2 foals. The big stud first came up and sniffed Andrew’s hand and kept walking – they all drank from the stream and when they were done, the stud and one of the mares walked straight up to us and the stud started licking and chewing on my boots – and then they all walked off – such a special encounter even though we were hoping to see some native animals here not ones introduced by Europeans. On our way back we stopped at a short hiking track to Laguna Negra which is a peatbog in the process of being formed and the water looked black and we saw interesting cloud formations and listened to birds, the lapping of the water and the wind. We left another one of our stickers there before heading back to the bikes and finding white flowering bushes in the Ericaceae family (have not yet been able to identify the species) with soldier beetles on them. Some other flowers familiar to me from Europe (Sumpfdotterblumen) and the strange looking hemi-parasites (Misodendrum punctulatum) growing on the trees. The only other animal we saw was another introduced species – a rabbit.

We enjoyed our ride back in tge golden hour sunlight passed an accident scene where a car collided into the armco – luckily there was an armco there.

We ended the day with another very nice dinner at a restaurant near our accommodation and we got wet in the rain in our way home. Luckily it seems to only rain over night and when we rufe it usually starts after we have arrived and bikes and us are under cover 😉🙏

Warning: there are a lot of videos of us riding on the dirt road – keep the volume off as there is a rattle which we don’t quite know where it is coming from or skip it all together although you get a good idea of the roads and the scenery 👍🏍🏍