It’s not Alcatraz but it sure feels like it. In 1902 the government of Argentina opened a prison designed by an Italian architect as the spokes of a wheel around a central hub. In the end only half got built with 386 cells that housed 600 prisoners. Nowadays it’s a museum housing prison mementoes as well as some maritime and Antarctic history.
When we went inside I wanted to see the history of Paso Garibaldi, the highest point at a mere 1400 feet on the road just outside Ushuaia. Before the road was built it was a trail used by people on foot and horseback.
The first vehicle to drive the pass, obviously a Jeep.
And a replica of the first civilian vehicle to make the drive.
The pass was named for a local who lived in the mountain rains and helped maintain the original horse trail.
As it looks today:
Time for Rusty to hop aboard GANNET2 and for us to go for a walk in jail.
More local transport, in this case a motor sailer used to carry supplies up and down the Beagle Channel to the ranches.
It was salvaged by the Argentine Navy and brought back to Ushuaia.
In the spirt of bankruptcy that pervades Argentina the tickets cost us $35 each and we got to see some models of explorer’s vessels such as we have seen previously in Punta Arenas.
The Yaghan/Yamaná lived here before the missionaries and were wiped out within a hundred years. The missionary Thomas Bridges spoke their language and write a dictionary which is still being studied today.
The indigenous survived by covering themselves in animal fat and wearing skins, they ate fish and seals and made rudimentary temporary huts to live in. Europeans forced them to style down in permanent huts so they did the usual, got disease and despair and died off. By 1980 two last Yaghan speakers were left and that was that.
This is the nice restored wing you can walk in central heat, good lighting and fresh paint. It still looked pretty claustrophobic.
Happy inmates:
The cold damp smelly unrestored wing seemed more realistic.
Home sweet home. The cells in the restored wing hold exhibits but this is where they lived those 600 prisoners.
Extra naughty prisoners got shackled and had to be carried around as they couldn’t move their legs with these things on.
Ghastly.
The rather clunking translated literature about the place.
The restored jail cell:
Argentine Antarctic explorers of the 1950s.
Looks like fun. We don’t hear about them but Chile and Argentine claim wedges of the continent and have bases down there.
The 1884 lighthouse at the bottom of the world.
And that was that. Tons to see and quite the history of such a strange and isolated place.
