Sailing
cruises Tierra del Fuego - Cape Horn |
Landscapes
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Rock
Fireland lies at the extreme south
of the Andes range ending in Staten Island. These mountains
were born 150 millions years ago, when all the austral continents
were joined in one: Gondwana. The rock was then a heap of
mud, sand, ashes and lava from active volcanoes. Slowly, during
millions of years, the fabulous forces of the earth broke,
rose and fold the rocks forming the base of the actual relief.
The north of the main island, like Patagonia and Falkland
islands remained immersed longer, and remains a flat plateau.
Landscape
- Fireland
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Ice
Several ice ages occurred until the last one 10 000 years
ago. Except the highest peaks, the whole area was covered
with ice. Today we can find traces of it everywhere that
erosion hasn't had time to erase. It is magnificently present
in the huge glacier sheet of the Darwin Range. The beautiful
glaciers that can be seen there are the remains of enormous
ice rivers that have modelled the earth and the landscape
that we know with huge snowy wooded mountains rounding large
valleys cut in the rock. |
Glaciar in the fjords - Fireland |
Vegetation
The first plant to appear after glaciers retreat was the
sphagnum, a moss growing extremely slowly in humid zones
and producing peat. It is found everywhere in Fireland where
it is exploited essentially as fertilizer. In the Falkland
islands where there are no trees, it is used for heating.
In autumn, its brownish colour becomes scarlet and golden
mimicking the colour of the trees. The fuegian forest is
essentially composed of trees of the nothofagus family.
No pine or birch but beech trees cover the valleys and mountain
sides up to 600 meters. They form thick forests which are
sometimes impenetrable, for the ground is strewn with branches
and rotting trunks. The climate is never really warm, thus,
dead wood takes years to disappear and forms astonishing
sculptures. |
Small bushes with golden flowers like
calafate or michay (box leafed and holly leafed barberries)
give delicious fruits in summer and the hiker will be surprised
to find beautiful flowers, wild strawberries and delicate
orchids. In the south, the Horn island and the Wollaston archipelago
after Nassau Bay have its own micro climate and a more arid
subantartic vegetation with tussock grass, lichens, small
clumps of grass, and trees tortured by the winds.
Fruits of Fireland - Chaura
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