The end of the world — king crab at the bottom of Argentina, the Beagle Channel, and the last city before Antarctica
Ushuaia is the world's southernmost city — a port town on the Beagle Channel in Argentine Tierra del Fuego, where the Andes plunge into the sea and the weather can turn on a summer afternoon. The city is the jumping-off point for Antarctic expedition cruises (the Drake Passage crossing begins here), the Tierra del Fuego National Park (the southernmost national park in the world), and the Beagle Channel boat trips to see Magellanic penguins on the islands. Centolla (king crab) is Ushuaia's defining dish — available live from tanks in the fishing port at prices far below what you'd pay in Bueno…
Ushuaia's coast was inhabited by the Yaghan people for at least 10,000 years — one of the world's most southernmost human populations, who survived in Tierra del Fuego's brutal climate by rubbing animal fat on their skin. Charles Darwin encountered the Yaghan during the Beagle voyage (1831–36) and described them in his journals; the Beagle Channel is named after his ship. The Argentine government established a penal colony here in 1884 — the same prison that now houses the city's maritime museum — to assert sovereignty over the southern tip of South America. Ushuaia grew into a permanent city…