Les Eclaireurs Lighthouse
Faro Les Éclaireurs
Interesting facts
- The islets were named Les Éclaireurs, French for the scouts, by naval officer Louis-Ferdinand Martial, who led the French scientific expedition aboard La Romanche in 1882–83.
- The brick tower was built between December 1918 and January 1919, but nearly two more years passed before its light was switched on in December 1920.
- The tower is about three metres wide at the base, has no windows at all, and a single door facing west is its only way in.
- Its lantern shows white and red flashes in a five-second rhythm, visible for about seven nautical miles along the channel.
- In January 1930 the German liner Monte Cervantes tore its hull on an uncharted rock nearby, and its captain deliberately ran the sinking ship onto the Les Eclaireurs reef.
- All of the Monte Cervantes passengers, more than 1,100 people, were rescued, but the captain, who stayed aboard, died when the ship went down the next day.
- The wreck earned Monte Cervantes the nickname Titanic of the South, and Ushuaia, then a town of about 800, had to lodge some survivors in its prison.
- The islets sit in mid-channel, roughly halfway between the main island of Tierra del Fuego and Chile's Navarino Island.
- The light is maintained by the Argentine Navy's Naval Hydrographic Service, which operates it remotely as a guide into the bay of Ushuaia.
Why it is worth it
Les Eclaireurs Lighthouse is a small tower with an outsized setting. It stands on the northeasternmost of a cluster of bare rocky islets in the Beagle Channel, about five nautical miles east of Ushuaia, with the mountains of Tierra del Fuego rising around it. The tower is only 11 metres high — a stout brick cylinder painted red with a broad white band, topped by a black lantern and a gallery — but set on its dark rock in the middle of the channel, with cold water and big skies all around, it has become the defining image of the far south of Argentina.
The light was put into service on 23 December 1920 and still works today, automated, unmanned and powered by solar panels, its lamp about 22.5 metres above the water. Argentines often call it the Lighthouse at the End of the World, but that name really belongs to a different light: the San Juan de Salvamento lighthouse on Isla de los Estados, which inspired Jules Verne's novel of the same title. Les Eclaireurs has simply borrowed the romance, and its location — within sight of the southernmost city in the country — makes the borrowing easy to forgive.
No one lands on the islet; the lighthouse is seen from the water, on the short boat trips that leave Ushuaia's tourist pier. The same routes pass the neighbouring islands where South American sea lions haul out on Isla de los Lobos and where colonies of cormorants crowd the rocks of Isla de los Pájaros. The best moments come when the boat swings close and the tower stands against the mountains across the channel — especially in the long, low southern light of summer evenings.
Getting there
The lighthouse lies in the Beagle Channel roughly five nautical miles east of Ushuaia's harbour. Ushuaia – Malvinas Argentinas International Airport (USH) is about 14 km away, with flights from Buenos Aires. Boat and catamaran tours, most of them combining the lighthouse with the sea lion and bird islands, depart from the Muelle Turístico in the centre of Ushuaia; the islet itself cannot be visited on foot.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Les Eclaireurs Lighthouse is a slightly conical lighthouse standing on the northeasternmost island of the five or more Les Eclaireurs islands, which it takes its name from, 5 nautical miles (9 km) east of Ushuaia in the Beagle Channel, Tierra del Fuego, southern Argentina.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
-54.87153, -68.08333per Wikidata