Further along, the wagons wend through the Cemetery of the Trees, hundreds upon hundreds of acres of trees removed by convicts. As you can see, the prisoners cut down many, many trees. Soon the train enters the Tierra del Fuego National Park, pocked with peat bogs and hardscrabble hills. Across the Beagle Channel, the Chilean mountains of the Darwin Cordillera glow a pale blue-white. Chile and Argentina share the main island of Tierra del Fuego.
Beech forests rise up the mountains and whisper in the wind.
With the prisoners long gone, beavers now do the work of felling trees, leaving trunks with toothmarks. Snowy footprints, perhaps a fox, lead up a streambank. A cormorant, a seabird whose wingspan can reach 6 feet, flies in search of an inviting lake as the train ride comes to an end. Here in Tierra del Fuego, water is as much a formidable presence as land. Andean flute music is piped into the Ezequiel's enclosed double-deck salon.