Tierra del Fuego National Park and the Lame Train

The National Park is gorgeous, as is so much of the scenery in the area.

Water, trees, greenery, flowers everywhere. Summer time bundled in our warmest traveling clothes.

There wasn't much in the way of sun, and there was a bit of rain periodically, but not much dampens the enthusiasm of children who have access to a large body of water and rocks.

Children of all ages.

However, our time in the park was foreshortened by a scheduled trip to the Train At the End of the World. No illusions here, folks, this ranked LAST on every traveler survey competed by my family at the end of the trip - not excepting that night we spent in the Buenos Aires airport, and that's saying a lot.

The basic concept of this "train" is that it is meant to be a representation of a prisoner train that ran down this way a hundred years ago. Using the Australian penal colony as a sort of a template, the idea was to create a place in Argentina that was so desperately isolated that the most horrible hardened criminals could be kept there with no chance of escape.

So, a hundred years ago, the railway was created as a way for the criminals to access the forests for raw materials for building. The weather in Tierra del Fuego, as we have alluded is neither temperate nor predictable. It is bitterly cold in the winter with horrific winds and not all that much better in the summer. The prisoners, the sort who committed heinous murders, etc, are probably not the sort of sub-humans we should spend much time pitying.

And yet ... this??

Ick. I mean, really. Just, ick. I confess that all I could imagine when I saw this were prisoners dying of hypothermia right and left. I know, I just typed that we're not talking about a group of people who probably deserve much in the way of sympathy, and yet, one can only imagine the inhuman conditions these folks suffered.

And the train? There is nothing authentic or actually "representative" about it. The tracks are apparently in the general vicinity of the actual "prisoner train" tracks, as they go through the area where the prisoners harvested trees for building back in Ushuaia. But even the track gauge isn't the same.

This little train is a typical tourist sort of train produced for places like, Prater Park. In Prater, it's cute, and a fun way to tour around the park. Down here, it just feels, well ... disrespectful? Disrespectful to a bunch of murdering, thieving hooligans? Yeah, I'm conflicted. But, really, I think it's just wrong. 

But a far worse crime for the wee children than disrespectful was that it was simply boring. The train putted along at walking speed. The scenery was interesting, but I think it would have been more enjoyable to hike through. There was a running monologue in both Spanish and English that was, at best tragic.

The commentary was hard to follow, it didn't provide much in the way of information, and if I were the cynical sort, I would have said it was written in Spanish, someone Google Translated it to English, Google Translated it back to Spanish, then sent that bit through back to English, whereupon some poor bloke was forced to read it for posterity. You can almost hear the Whiskey Tango Foxtrot in his voice as he reads the nearly incomprehensible text. 

The net net:

Ah, well. We were leaving Ushuaia in a few hours, and napping was just about the right thing to be doing. The plan was:

(1) Catch the 8:00pm flight from Ushuaia to the Buenos Aires International airport, arrive at midnight

(2) Catch taxi to the Buenos Aires Domestic airport, arrive around 1:00am

(3) Catch a snooze on the floor

(4) Catch 5:30am flight to Neuquén, pick up rental car, drive four hours to estancia, our Grand Christmas Holiday Treat. 

Okay, my Grand Christmas Holiday Treat. It was my idea that spending four nights on a working cattle ranch in the middle of nowhere would be a grand holiday. This is the sort of thing that happens when one member of the family is in charge of holiday travel.

Comments

[Ann]

What a trip! Do your kids fly enough to get upgrades ahead of business travelers on your flights? We did when my sister and I were young, and it was always fun to see the reactions of fellow passengers.

[Ellen]

Ha! No, their view of first and business class is all about the seat size envy they have walking through. They both are Star Alliance "Frequent Flyers," but that and $4.39 will buy you a Grande Mocha Frappuccino at your local Starbucks. Seriously, the really frequent flyers get some perks, but the likes of us are happy to get pre-boarding.