Bahia Ensenada and Rio Pipo Travel Guide

To the north of the railway terminus is the pleasant wooded valley of Cañadón del Toro, through which runs the Río Pipo . A gentle four-kilometre walk along an unsealed road brings you to the Río Pipo campsite (free and with no services, although this status is likely to change), and a couple of hundred metres on you come to an attractive cascade . Although a route north from here through to Lago Fagnano is marked on some old maps, the area is now off limits and you will be fined if caught there. If you're heading from Río Pipo back south to Bahía Ensenada, take the Senda Pampa Alta trail, which is signposted off west on the way back to the crossroads. This offers 5km of fairly demanding walking and is a more interesting alternative to walking between the two by road, with fine views from a lookout over the Beagle Channel. It crosses the RN3 to Lapataia at a point 3km west of the station crossroads, and then drops sharply to the coast on a poor path through thick forest.

Bahía Ensenada , situated 2km south of the crossroads by the train station, is a small bay with little of intrinsic interest. It does, however, have the jetty for boats to Lapataia and the Isla Redonda, and is the trailhead for one of the most pleasant of the park's walks, the highly recommended Senda Costera (7km; 3hr). The route is not too strenuous and allows you to experience dense coastal forest of evergreen beech, Winter's bark, and lenga , whilst affording spectacular views from the Beagle Channel shoreline. On the way, you'll pass grass-covered mounds that are the ancient campsite middens of the Yámana. These mounds are protected archeological sites and should not be disturbed. In autumn, a confetti of evergreen beech leaves carpets the pathway, a phenomenon that has become more prevalent in recent years, and which some believe is linked to damage caused by the hole in the ozone layer. Along the route, you stand a healthy chance of seeing birds such as the powerful Magellanic woodpecker, and the flightless steamer duck ( quetro no volador or alacush ), an ash-grey bird with an orange bill that uses its wings in paddle-steaming fashion to hurry itself away from danger.