PUNTA ARENAS CHILE — CITY AT THE END OF THE WORLD

The flight to this city, at the tip of South America, feels like a journey to the end of the world. Looking through the windows, during our LanChile flight, it's easy to see why.

No road has ever penetrated the Andes that separate Punta Arenas from the rest of Chile. Glaciers inch their icy way over jagged peaks, and snow drips over their sides like a thick, white frosting.

The only way to reach Punta Arenas by land, from the capital Santiago, is through Argentina. And it's a 3,200-kilometer journey. We're talking isolated.

Views of Tierra del Fuego and Strait of Magellan

View from the Hill of the Cross of Punta Arenas, Strait of Magellan and Tierra del Fuego. Chile.

Photo © Barb & Ron Kroll

The view of this city of 135,000, from the Hill of the Cross, however, is far from bleak. Roofs, the colour of cherries, blueberries, apricots and grapes, brighten homes above the steel-blue Strait of Magellan. The island of Tierra del Fuego anchors the horizon.

Punta Arenas was founded in 1848, as a penal colony. After gold was discovered in California, the colonial outpost grew as a supply port for maritime traffic between the US west coast and Europe.

When the opening of the Panama Canal reduced the number of ships making the long journey, entrepreneurs turned to sheep-farming for their livelihood. Today, you can still see the opulent mansion once owned by the Braun-Menéndez family, which made a fortune from wool. It's now a museum, housing artefacts from the early European settlers.

Imported steam engine was used by early settlers in Punta Arenas. Patagonian Institute Memory Museum. Chile.

Photo © Barb & Ron Kroll

The wool boom brought in immigrants from Italy, Spain, Germany, Scandinavia, Britain and Yugoslavia. The Patagonian Institute displays the imported steam engines and wagons that they used to colonize the area, as well as a reconstructed pioneer home and sheep-shearing shed.

The Municipal Cemetery speaks volumes about the region's history. Here are the extravagant mausoleums of José Menéndez, and the other wool barons, surrounded by the much more modest, but well-tended tombs of the European immigrants who worked on the sheep ranches.

Nowadays, oil and natural gas also support the economy. A huge drilling platform sits just off the coast, waiting to be moved to an offshore well.

Shrunken head and Magellanic penguins

There are few other tourist attractions in town, other than the Salesian Museum, which was founded by the missionaries who helped settle the area. Its hodgepodge collection includes stuffed condors and guanacos (llama-like animals), a shrunken head from Ecuador, and pottery, baskets, arrowheads and necklaces from the four original Indian tribes that once inhabited the area. All were largely decimated by the loss of their hunting grounds, disease and alcoholism, brought in by whalers and seal hunters, and outright slaughter.

Municipal Cemetery. Punta Arenas. Chile.

Photo © Barb & Ron Kroll

Most tourists don't come to Punta Arenas to see the city. Some are in transit to Tierra del Fuego for fishing and horseback riding. Others are awaiting embarkation on cruises to the Beagle Channel and Antarctica.

Visitors who are not venturing as far as the southern continent, can still see penguins on the outskirts of Punta Arenas. Between October and March, Magellanic penguins come ashore to breed and lay their eggs. On tours to the colonies, you can watch the birds pop out of their burrows like so many tuxedo-clad jack-in-the-boxes.

World Biosphere Reserve

Without a doubt, the most popular excursion and the reason most people come to Punta Arenas, is to visit Torres del Paine National Park. The 242,000-hectare UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve is named after the 3,000-meter soaring granite pinnacles called the Paine (pronounced “piney”).

While you can rent a car for the six-hour journey to the park, it's easier to buy a package that includes room, meals, guided excursions and transfer to and from Punta Arenas.

The eco-friendly Explora Hotel, for example, offers surprisingly luxurious accommodations for such a remote location. Guided hiking and horseback tours bring participants to alpine meadows to see cascading waterfalls, grazing guanacos, soaring condors, turquoise lakes filled with icebergs, and robin’s egg-blue glaciers shaped like Gothic cathedrals.

All well-worth the journey to the bottom of the world.

TRAVEL INFORMATION

Tourism Promotion Corporation of Chile: www.visit-chile.org/