Ushuaia exists because of a prison. In the late 19th century, Argentina looked at this remote coast and saw what Britain saw in Australia - a place far enough from civilization to dump its worst criminals. The Presidio de Ushuaia opened in 1896, housing murderers, anarchists, and political prisoners who spent their days cutting down the native lenga forests to build the town that would eventually replace their prison.

The last inmates left in 1947, and the prison is now the Museo Marítimo - a haunting space where you can walk the original cell blocks, see the prisoners' photographs, and understand how brutal isolation was used as punishment. The railway they built to haul timber is now the Tren del Fin del Mundo, a tourist train that chugs through what remains of the forest into Tierra del Fuego National Park. The convicts are long gone. Their town remains, transformed into something they never could have imagined.

The setting is operatic. To the north, the Martial Glacier hangs on the flanks of peaks that rise 1,300 meters directly from the city streets. To the south, the Beagle Channel stretches toward Chile and the scattered islands that dissolve into the Southern Ocean. The channel is named for Darwin's ship, which anchored here in the 1830s; its waters are still traveled by descendants of the Yámana people who paddled these shores for millennia.

The hiking is spectacular and immediate. A chairlift climbs toward the Martial Glacier, where you can crunch across snow with the city spread below and Chile visible across the channel. Harder trails lead to Laguna Esmeralda, its waters an impossible jade-green, or into the valleys behind the town where condors ride the thermals. In winter, the slopes become ski runs - among the southernmost in the world, with views of the sea from every piste.

Every summer, Ushuaia's port fills with expedition ships. Some are massive cruise liners; others are reinforced ice-breakers carrying a hundred adventurers toward the Peninsula. The Drake Passage crossing takes two days each way - two days of rolling seas that can humble even experienced sailors, followed by the reward of icebergs, penguins, and landscapes of such purity that they redefine what wilderness means.

Ushuaia has built itself around this trade. Outdoor gear shops line the main street. Restaurants serve pre-expedition dinners to nervous first-timers. Last-minute berths on departing ships can sometimes be had at steep discounts for the flexible. The airport, rebuilt and expanded, now receives direct flights from around the world. What was once a remote prison colony is now the most important staging point for Antarctic tourism on Earth.

Tierra del Fuego - Land of Fire - takes its name from the fires that Magellan's crew saw burning along the coast in 1520, lit by the Yámana and Selk'nam peoples who had lived here for at least 10,000 years. Disease brought by European missionaries largely destroyed these cultures by the early 20th century. A single fluent Yámana speaker is said to remain, living across the channel in Chile.

The national park west of Ushuaia preserves what the prisoners' axes didn't destroy: forests of lenga and coihue, peat bogs that glow orange in autumn, and coastline where Magellanic penguins nest in burrows. Lapataia Bay marks the end of Route 3, Argentina's southernmost road - a point that feels genuinely final, with nothing beyond but islands, wind, and the cold run to Cape Horn. Signs mark the distance to Buenos Aires: 3,260 kilometers. To Alaska: 17,848. You are very far from anywhere.

Ushuaia's weather is a negotiation. Summer brings 19 hours of daylight but rarely warmth - temperatures hover around 10°C, interrupted by sudden rain, sudden sun, and wind that never quite stops. Winter is short on light but not as cold as you'd expect: Belfast-like temperatures, heavy snow, and ski season from June to October. The spring 'Buildup' can be the worst - fierce winds, unpredictable storms, the kind of weather that closes airports and tests patience.

But when the weather cooperates, Ushuaia reveals why people come. The light at the end of the world has a particular quality - thin, clear, almost crystalline. Sunsets last for hours, painting the Martial peaks in shades of rose and gold. The channel turns silver at dusk. And from the hills above town, you can look south across the water to the islands beyond, knowing that between you and Antarctica lies only ocean.