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23,000 permanent residents. They are descendants of English missionaries who stayed on as farmers, of Yugoslavian and Romanian miners, of sailors from Spain and Italy, of Chileans who came looking for work, of a few Germans, and of the minuscule sad remnants of the native Indian population. The people are miners, fishermen, farmers, sheep ranchers, builders, construction engineers, cannery workers, and shopkeepers. A large number are involved in tourist services, an industry that seemed, in April of 1987, to be booming.
    In the lower-latitude competition, Ushuaia is the clear winner. Port Elizabeth in South Africa is 33 degrees 58 minutes south; Hobart in Tasmania is 42 degrees 54 minutes south; Invercargill on New Zealand is 46 degrees 26 minutes south; and Ushuaia is 54 degrees 48 minutes south.
    More than likely, many tourists are drawn to Ushuaia precisely because it is the town at the end of the earth. The settlement is a scant 760 miles from Antarctica, specifically from the Antarctic peninsula, a section of the icy continent that stretches up well above the Antarctic Circle. Even so, the weather in Ushuaia is surprisingly constant andmild. The record winter low is 10 Fahrenheit degrees above zero. The record high is just above 80 in the summer, with an average summer day coming in at 51 degrees. The town of graceful frame houses is set on a hillside overlooking the Beagle Channel to the south. A spectacular range of mountains, the Cerro Martial, rises behind the town, to the north. Those tourists who come to see the end of the earth often return because Ushuaia is beautiful, serene, and temperate. The Argentine government has recently upped the ante on tourism as well: Ushuaia is now a duty-free port and there are a number of elegant shops selling expensive goods at a discount. A visitor can now buy Calvin Klein jeans and shirts with alligators on them at the end of the earth, an idea with all the charm and grace of a mugging.
    Chile claims to have the most southern city on earth, Punta Arenas, at 53 degrees 9 minutes south, and there are Chileans who will claim that the settlement of Puerto Williams, on Isla Navarino, a mile or so across the Beagle Channel from Ushuaia, is the southernmost town in the world. But Puerto Williams is a Chilean navy base. Even the tourist hotel on the island is owned by the navy.
    And there are Argentines who contend that military installations don’t constitute an actual permanent and entirely voluntary population. In Ushuaia, there is a government tourist agency, Turismo, where a spritely young Argentine woman named Veronica Iglesias argued that her town had to be considered the last in the world. It got down to splitting hairs, really, Veronica felt. There were scientists and workers who overwintered in Antarctica, after all. Were they a true “permanent settlement”? Did any of them own their own houses there? Or expect to live out their lives there? Be buried there? And how about Puerto Williams? Wasn’t it really a military base? Not really a civilian settlement where men and women lived as a matter of choice?
    Garry and I told Veronica we were looking for the end of the road, and she was equally adamant. There was a road, after all, on Isla Navarino, but it “wasn’t a national road.” I gathered that Veronica meant the road existed on the island and for the island. It was not part of a larger national and international system. Veronica believed that the road we wanted was even now being built east and south of Ushuaia. It branched off of Argentina Route 3, was part of the national system. It was called Route J, though when it was first being built about twenty-five years ago, the governor of the territory felt it was such a poor excuse for a road that he called it “Ruta Cero,” Route Zero, and the name has stuck.
    The next day I ran into an American, Mark Eichenberger, who understood the search for the end of the road. He had driven down from the States over the winter of