24 When the Road Ends

Cuando se termina la carretera

Ushuaïa |

Argentina

Spanish

Behind the scenes

This text was born from an image that has long fascinated me: the end of the road. In the far south of South America, at the edges of Argentina and Chile, roads sometimes seem to come to a halt before the wind, the sea, and the mountains.

The Beagle Channel, located between Tierra del Fuego and the southern islands, reinforces this impression even further. It marks one of the southernmost passages in the inhabited world and has, for centuries, fueled the imagination of sailors and travelers – a place where reality almost blends with myth.

In this setting, I imagined a man relentlessly chasing the horizon, as if he could reach it, until the moment the road ends. When the pursuit of the impossible comes to an end, a strange suspension appears – somewhere between relief, vertigo, and doubt about what was truly being sought.

Echoes of the world

The text is written in Spanish, but in a setting that lies between Argentina and Chile, two countries that share the same language with noticeably different accents.

In Argentine Spanish, certain letters shift in sound. The combinations “ll” and “y” are often pronounced like a soft “sh.” For example, lloré (“I cried”), used in the text, can sound almost like sho-REH in Buenos Aires.

In Chile, pronunciation generally remains closer to the classic “y” sound.

The same word can therefore resonate differently depending on which side of the Andes you are on – as if the landscape itself were subtly changing its voice.

Listen to an audio excerpt of the text