Life after Annandale High: Blown Away in Southern Patagonia

Battling the wind in Chile's Los Magallanes region

After a week exploring northern Patagonia, it was time to head to the extreme southern part of the region. Our next destination was Punta Arenas, the Chilean city on the Strait of Magellan. I was really glad we were flying because driving would take about 26 hours while the flight time was a little over two hours.

I was just starting to realize how vast (over 400,000 square miles) and empty Patagonia is. Isolated numbers don’t mean that much to me but consider that the size of California is a little over 160,000 square miles. And then look at the relative population density of the two places. California has about 39 million inhabitants while Patagonia’s population is only 2 million in a much larger area. In fact, with a population density of five people per square mile, Patagonia is one of the most sparsely populated regions in the world. That was especially true in Los Magallanes, the southernmost region in Chile, where we’d be spending the next few days.

So, why, I wondered, did so few people live there? Who lived here before Europeans arrived? What was the history of European settlement? What is the lifestyle of the people who live there today?

So many questions were swirling around in my mind as I gazed out the window of the plane. On the descent into Punta Arenas, as we broke through the thick cloud cover, all I could see was a desolate monochromatic landscape – totally flat and gray. From the air, it certainly didn’t look like the kind of place I’d want to live. Yet Javi, our tour leader, was born and raised in Punta Arenas, and spoke fondly of his hometown (although he mentioned that when he was growing up, there were few outdoor sports because of the extremely windy conditions).

Punta Arenas is actually the oldest permanent settlement in southern Patagonia. The city’s founding goes back to the 1840s, when newly independent Chile was trying to strengthen its claim to the territory. In order to populate the land, the Chilean government not only encouraged its own people to move to the region, it also advertised for European immigrants to settle here. Large numbers of immigrants arrived from various countries in Europe. Although the land wasn’t suitable for farming, it was perfect for sheep farming. After sheep were introduced from Las Malvinas (the Falkland Islands) in the 1860s, the raising of sheep quickly became the basis of the region’s economy.

In addition, the location of Punta Arenas, on the shores of the Strait of Magellan, was strategically important since, prior to the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, all transoceanic ship traffic had to pass through this body of water. For many years, Punta Arenas was a thriving port city, and a center of commercial and cultural activity. While Punta Arenas no longer receives the same amount of ship traffic, it’s still the center of culture, commerce, and education for southern Patagonia. And in recent years, the discovery of oil and natural gas deposits have brought wealth to the region.

Today, eighty percent of the population of Los Magallanes makes their home in Punta Arenas. The population of 145,000 includes a high proportion of non-Spanish Europeans, including the largest number of Croatians in the world outside Croatia and the former Yugoslavia. There are also large numbers of residents of British descent, plus descendants of Greek, German, Dutch, Danish and other Scandinavian, Russian, and Portuguese immigrants.

Our hotel, the former palace of Portuguese naval hero Jose Nogueira, was quite a contrast to our previous lodgings on Chiloe Island. The building, which dates back to 1905, was the epitome of Old World luxury with plush carpets, French windows, heavy draperies, crystal chandeliers, fine furniture, and silk wall coverings. I was lucky to be assigned a commodious suite.

The name of the bar in our hotel was a reference to the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shakleton who departed from Punta Arenas on several of his expeditions.

Soon after we checked in to our hotel, I took a quick walk down one of the main commercial streets. Just a few blocks away was the Strait of Magellan, and the older low-rise buildings gave Punta Arenas a small-town feel.

I was disappointed to find that, at 7:30pm, most of the shops were already closed. But I admired the cathedral, with its Renaissance style tower dedicated to the Salesian order. Its construction began in 1892.

The wind was definitely blowing. Javi told us that it blows constantly. The wind comes from the west, picking up moisture over the open waters of the Pacific Ocean, with nothing to stop its force for about 6000 miles between the east coast of New Zealand and the west coast of Patagonia.

Right after breakfast the next morning, I bundled up (it felt like winter, not summer here) and took a walk around the corner to the main square, known as the Plaza Muñoz Gamero or the Plaza de Armas. Normally, it would be crowded with locals and tourists, but since it was quite early on a Sunday morning, I had the plaza to myself. It’s filled with tall trees, benches, and walking paths. At the center of the plaza is an impressive granite and bronze monument honoring the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. He is looking out towards the coast and the port, which is just a couple of blocks from the plaza. At the base of Magellan’s figure are representations of the indigenous people who lived in the area.

I wouldn’t have minded staying a full day in Punta Arenas, but by 8am we were on our bus, heading northwest via Puerto Natales to the Southern Patagonian Ice Field in Torres del Paine National Park. As we drove out of town, I got a glimpse of Tierra del Fuego across the choppy gray waters of the Strait of Magellan.

The Southern Patagonian Ice Field is part of the larger Patagonian Ice Field that formed more than 21,000 years ago. At one time, it covered all of southern Chile and Argentina. Of course, the ice field has been melting since the end of the last glacial period, but during the last 40 to 50 years, the rate of Patagonian ice loss has sped up substantially.

Shortly after we got on the bus, Javi showed us the flag of Los Magallanes. The white peaks represent the ice field, the yellow represents the pampas, and the blue sky with the stars is a reference to the Southern Cross constellation.

It was a shock to see signs in fields just north of the city that said “DANGER, MINE FIELD.” The signs date back to 1987, when ongoing border disputes with Argentina threatened to escalate into armed conflict. The Border Treaty of 1881 resolved most of the border issues between the 2 countries, but it was difficult to apply in the far south of Patagonia.

The weather was changing rapidly, which is typical of the region. One minute rain drops would be splattering the windows, the next minute the sun would break through the clouds. Javi pointed out the little oval-shaped hills in the landscape, which are called drumlins. They were formed by glacial action during the last glacial period.

We had an unexpected delay when we ran across a large number of sheep in the middle of the road. This was not an unusual occurrence, according to Javi, who called it a Patagonian roadblock. The herd was being moved across the road and we waited about 15 minutes while the shepherd (on a motorbike) managed to get all the sheep off the roadway. One sheep did not want to cooperate! The breed of sheep is a mixture of merino (good for wool) and Lincoln (good for meat).

Not long afterwards, we saw young rheas, also known as ñandus, the flightless birds that are native to the area.

Around the same time, we spotted a black chested buzzard eagle perched at the top of a pole. He flew off right as I was taking his photo.

With the windy conditions, it was natural to ask if anything was being done to harness this renewable source of energy. Javi told us that the government has installed wind turbines throughout southern Patagonia to produce green hydrogen and that they make a significant contribution to Chile’s economy. I made a note to myself to look up “green hydrogen” while he went on to explain that Patagonia is important to the country’s economy in other ways. For one, it has large underground reserves of methane gas. And secondly, major companies such as Amazon and Starlink have acquired large tracts of land here with plans to build facilities in the wide open spaces. Other important sources of revenue in Chilean Patagonia today are fishing, salmon farming, sheep farming, oil extraction, and of course, tourism. So it isn’t surprising that the region has the lowest poverty level and highest average household income in the country.

That all sounded very positive, but Javi also got back to one of my earlier questions, i.e. were there people living here when Europeans arrived? And if so, how did the arrival of so many Europeans impact on their lives? I suspected there might be parallels to what happened to the Native Americans in the U.S.

I learned that there were indeed different groups of indigenous people who previously lived in extreme southern Patagonia, from the mainland of Magallanes, on the island of Tierra del Fuego, and all the way down to Cape Horn. They included the Tehuelches, the Selk’nam, the Yamanas, and others.

The number of native people quickly declined after the arrival of Europeans in the 19^th century. Those who didn’t die of smallpox or other diseases were often killed outright by Europeans who considered them less than human. Although I found it hard to believe, Jose Menendez, a Spanish businessman based in Chilean Patagonia, paid ranchers to kill the natives of Tierra del Fuego in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Seeing photographs of two of the last remaining natives was very moving.

The people that Magellan encountered in the early 1500s were probably the Tehuelche, who lived on the mainland. By all accounts from the time, they were very tall people. Magellan described them as patagóns(giants), which would explain how the region go its name. The Tehuelche were hunter-gatherers with a nomadic lifestyle. Their numbers were decimated by the arrival of Europeans. When I got home and did a little research, I learned that the last speaker of the Tehuelche language died in 2019.

The Selk’nam lived on the island of Tierra del Fuego, which was connected to the mainland 10,000 years ago. Javi showed us photos taken by the German priest and ethnographer Martin Gusinde who documented their Stone Age culture. Despite the extremely harsh weather conditions, the Selk’nam did not wear clothing but you can see how they painted their bodies. The photos were taken in the 1930s, and not long afterwards, disease had completely wiped out the Selk’nam population. (6980, If you search online, you’ll be able to find more of Gusinde’s photos:

https://arthur.io/art/martin-gusinde

The southernmost group was the Yamana, or Yahgans, who lived at the very tip of South America, at Cape Horn. They used canoes and hunted guanaco for their fur.

In a book by ethnographer Anne Chapman, who did field work among the few remaining natives in Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn in the 1930s, we saw photos taken by a French expedition to Cape Horn in the early 1880s. In 1990, she made a documentary film called Homage to the Yahgans: The Last Indians of Tierra del Fuego and Cape Horn. It tells the story of Jemmy Button, a Yahgan who was taken to England in 1830 and later returned to his homeland.

Around midday, we reached Puerto Natales, which meant we were a couple of hours from the Torres del Paine National Park. “Torres” is the Spanish word for towers and “Paine” is the Tehuelche word for blue. The park covers 550,000 acres and gets more than 300,000 visitors a year.

Once we were officially within the park, we got out of the bus to stretch our legs and were greeted a herd of guanacos. Javi told us that they can run up to 45 miles per hour if they’re being chased by a puma.

And speaking of pumas, we were among the lucky ones who actually got to see these elusive creatures in the park. It was especially surprising to catch a glimpse of them because they’re known to be nocturnal.

We also observed several Andean condors circling overhead and swooping towards the ground. With their wing span of eight to nine feet, they looked quite majestic. Knowing that condors are scavengers, Javi suggested that there was probably a dead guanaco somewhere in the vicinity. He reminded us that condors generally just glide on air currents because their heavy wings are so hard to lift.

The landscape became increasingly dramatic, and soon the towering peaks of the Andes rose before us. We stopped at Lake Sarmiento to take photos. On the right-hand side of the first photo, you can see the three tall blue-gray peaks (partially obscured by clouds) that gave the park its name. It was definitely windy!

We stopped for a hike in the eastern section of the park, in the area north of Lake Sarmiento. I was ready with my hiking poles, which I planned to stick in the ground and hold onto if the wind threatened to knock me off my feet. The trail wasn’t particularly rough or steep but the fierce wind made it challenging to walk. The views were definitely worth it!

When we finished our hike about two hours later, we drove west on a winding road, stopping to take photos of Lake Pehoé. The intense blue-green color of the lake results from a combination of micro-organisms, sediments, bacteria, and algae in the water.

We continued traveling west to the shores of Lake Grey, where the Lago Grey Hotel was located. In keeping with the setting, the style of hotel was rustic. It was still light out at 6pm but thick clouds had rolled in and the temperature was dropping.

In this part of Patagonia, the temperatures are cold year-round. I assumed we were close to the South Pole, but the app on my phone told me that Torres del Paine was located at 51° south of the equator. That got me wondering what city would be at a comparable distance from the equator in the northern hemisphere. Well, London is at 51° north of the equator. I never felt like I was near the North Pole in London, even in the winter. To find a city with such cold temperatures year-round, I’d probably have to go much further north, perhaps to Tromsø, Norway, located at 69° north. Of course, as several people reminded me, it’s the Gulf Stream that keeps London and much of continental Europe from experiencing extreme cold.

On my way to the restaurant for breakfast the next morning, I saw several austral parakeets perched in the tree tops. My friend Suzanne got a much better picture of a couple of them sitting on a fence.

Another bird we saw (and heard) was a Magellanic woodpecker tapping away just outside the reception area of the hotel.

Before we set out on our morning hike, we stopped at a ranger station near Lake Toro to see exhibits about the park’s flora, fauna, and geology. I thought the outdoor display of different types of rocks found in the park was especially interesting.

The hiking trail lacked the dramatic impact of yesterday’s hike but at least it wasn’t as windy. We were able to focus on the geology and the plants. Javi explained the geological processes that occurred 12.5 million years ago and created the stratification that we saw in the rock formations.

He also identified plants, including lichen called old man's beard, coihue trees with their small leaves, and the non-native thorny broom.

A highlight of the hike was a beautiful view of Lake Toro.

I took the rest of the day off, relaxing at the hotel, enjoying a delicious salmon dinner, and watching the ever-changing spectacle of sky, land, and water.