At the end of the world they've run out of scenery. The view from the bus window was bleak: dull tundra stretched to the horizon under a hot cloudless sky, and the few birds overhead looked hopelessly lost. We were on our way to Tierra del Fuego, Land of Fire, 'Fin del Mundo', The End of the World. I've always wanted to go, to follow in the footsteps of Magellan and Darwin and see what it's like at the very edge of the map, or what used to be the edge of the map before it all got filled-in.

So it was with no small amount of excitement that I found myself standing on the edge of the South American continent, looking south across Magellan's Strait to Tierra del Fuego. This romanticism was dampened when the car ferry pulled in to take us across. We could have been going to Calais.

Whilst the Strait is by far and away the safest route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans (or was, before the Panama Canal was built) it's by no means a cake-walk. The clashing of the two oceans makes for a roller-coaster ride, and within a few minutes of leaving the shore Sarah and I had to climb out on deck to breath the fresh air and find a horizon to stare at. The air was pretty fresh. Freezing, actually. We were contemplating climbing back down when we noticed a black and white object streaking through the water towards the ship at high speed. As a large wave rolled over it, the black and white shape broke free of the water, jumping though the air for a second before diving under our bow. Commerson's dolphins! Just like their cousins in Puerto Madryn, the dolphins in the Strait like to ride the waves that form around the boats, and we were soon joined by four or five of them, zipping around in the surf. We were so distracted watching their antics that we didn't notice the enormous wave coming towards us. It hit us with a crunch and a splash, completely drenching the entire starboard side of the ferry, including the 30 or so passengers who were out on deck. Sarah and I burst out laughing, but the smug Dutch guy next to us with the now-soggy, formerly-fancy SLR looked less-than pleased.

Once we arrived on the other side of the Strait, I was a little disappointed to discover that the scenery was pretty much the same, in that there wasn't much of it. More flat plain as far as we could see. This began to change though, as we drove further and further south. Over the next few hours evergreen forests appeared around large alpine lakes, and the road began to weave left and right as we climbed up towards some mini-mountains. We were driving up over the end of the Andes – the coccyx of the spine that stretches the entire length of South America. At their bottom as they peter out the Andes make one last swerve east, a detour caused by the grinding of the Scotia against the South American plate. These mountains are the youngest of the Andean range, and are only knee-high to some the peaks we saw to the west of Mendoza and Bariloche. It was over this last small hurdle that we had to travel to reach Ushuaia, the Southernmost City on Earth, nestled between the mountains and the sea, staring south towards Antarctica.

At first glance, Ushuaia looks just as you would expect. Stacks of shipping containers, small grey battleships, bunkers and more corrugated iron roofs crowd the harbour and give the place the utilitarian feel of a WWII outpost. This atmosphere is dispelled as you enter the centre of town and realise that the Twee Alpine Architecture disease that afflicts Bariloche seems to have claimed another victim. I suppose the many rich tourists that now visit Ushuaia en-route to Antarctica need somewhere to stock-up on chocolate gifts and penguin ornaments.

Most of Tierra del Fuego's recent history is shaped by its remote location on the border between Argentina and Chile. Both want countries want a piece of the pie, and have been close to war several times while staking out their claims. One of the rules for claiming sovereignty over a place seems to be that you have to have people living there. This is an issue in Ushuaia, as who in their right mind would want to live in such a place? Covered in snow half the year, ripped apart by wind for the rest, driving you to madness with 18 hours of sunlight a day in the summer or depression in winter with only 6. Argentina initially got around the problem by forcing people to live there. Inspired by the British Empire's penal colonies in Australia, they decided to build their own in Tierra del Fuego. We spent a great morning wandering around the former prison cells of some of the first inhabitants of Ushuaia, including that of the famous Russian anarchist Simón Radowitzky who served 18 of his 21 years in solitary confinement for blowing up the Police Chief of Buenos Aires. He then escaped on a pirate ship, was recaptured, then pardoned, then made his way back to Europe where he fought in the Spanish Civil War before finally emigrating to Mexico where he died, presumably from exhaustion.

Also in the prison, we found this photo which we think deserves a special mention due to the the unknown prisoner in the first row, second from the right...

I wish I knew what he was in for. Judging by the look of his brylcreemed hair, square jaw, and moustache/eye patch combo I would say seducing a Naval Commander's wife, stealing a ship and then knocking-out the Mayor in a bar-brawl that started over a game of cards.

Argentina now uses less extreme measures to encourage people to live in Ushuaia. The whole town is a tax-haven, and the government employs roughly 70% of the population (doing what, we never found out) with incredibly generous salaries and employment terms such as the 'The 25 Winters Retirement' whereby those who stick out 25 winters in the town are allowed to retire early, on the best pension in the entire country.

Those not working for the government work in tourism, and as I mentioned above the most common reason for finding yourself in the town is to catch a cruise ship to Antarctica. Ushuaia sits above the Antarctic Peninsula that juts out from the mainland towards South America, which means you can easily reach it by a 4 day boat trip as opposed to a several weeks through dangerous iceberg-filled seas. We were almost tempted to try and get onto a boat on a last-minute ticket until we found out that even the cheapest berth would cost over $4,000. Most people pay $10 to $20,000 to make the trip.

Instead we contented ourselves with a more modest expedition by sea-kayak into the Beagle Channel. To get to the river where we would start our journey we had to take a minibus an hour east of town. For the most part we drove along the edge of a long U-shaped valley that in the winter is used for cross-country skiing and dog-sledding. As we sped by we saw a couple of farms where the huskies are bred – hundreds of white wooden kennels arranged in rows like a miniature version of the POW camp from The Great Escape.

We were a group of 12, and once we reached the river and got changed into rather fetching waterproofs we had to be divided into two kayaks for the two hour trip. We then dragged our inflatable kayaks into the river and spent a leisurely hour coasting downstream before we had to lift the kayaks over a sandbank and then pushed off out into the channel proper. Out in the open water we spent an hour paddling around cormorant-studded rocks and sea-weedy inlets. We even spotted an enormous turkey-vulture cruising around the bay, menacing the smaller birds.

It was a magnificent morning, but hard work. Sarah and I had elected to row in the smaller of the two kayaks, which was an error in that there were only 3 other people paddling with us, all of whom, whilst able to row in time, seemed completely incapable of actually putting any effort into the process. I found myself wishing I had the rest of The Gentlemen's Eight from college in the boat, with Miss Gledhill coxing. Then we would have got somewhere. As it was Sarah and I had to take the strain for all of us, which turned into a herculean effort as we made a last push back to shore into a headwind.

After our exertions we were treated with cups of soup, and piled back into the minibus for the second half of our trip – a nature hike on Gable Island, an almost-deserted Argentine military outpost in the middle of the Channel. To get there we took a zodiac – no more paddling thank god – and had a great lunch of steak sandwiches, olives and red wine on the island before setting off on our hike. We had lunch in the garden of the one and only building on the island, a three room wooden shack manned by three Argentine soldiers. Sounds official, but the reality was somewhat more casual. When I went into the building to use the loo I found all three in the living room having lunch. A fat man in a string vest was spooning meatballs out of an industrial sized pan set on the table for his colleagues. One of them was shoveling the food up as fast as it could be served, the other was slouching in his chair playing playstation (Assassin's Creed I). Keeping these three consummate professionals company were their three dogs; an ancient Alsatian, a mad Huskie-Corgie hybrid (a Horgie?) and an adorable terrier puppy. I spent most of lunch playing with the puppy, after it was bitten by the Horgie for acting up.

When we set off on our hike, the Horgie stalked off ahead through the bushes whilst the puppy happily bounded along with the group, clearly thrilled to have such a large pack to play with. We walked away from the camp along the beach before heading inland through sub-Antarctic forest from one side of the island to the other. Our guide Augustino was very knowledgeable, and supplied all manner of interesting names for the many trees and plants we'd been seeing over the past months – our favourites were Winter's Bark, Old Man's Beard, Indian's Bread and Chinese Lantern. As we walked through the forest, stopping to play with the puppy every five minutes, we saw several beaver dams and whole patches of forest destroyed by their malevolent tree-felling.

When we reached the beach where the zodiac was waiting to pick us up, we tearfully said goodbye to the terrier pup. The Horgie had emerged from the undergrowth to see us off as well, and both stood on the edge of the beach, looking forlorn as we chugged away waving in the boat. They looked terribly sad to have lost their playmates. That is until the Horgie turned around and began to cheerfully sodomise the poor terrier, staring out at us over the increasing expanse of water with his tongue hanging out.