Punta Arenas is the planet’s southernmost continental city, located on the north side of the Magellan Strait, across the sea from Tierra del Fuego.
Not quite at the end of the Earth, it is still very remote. But don’t be fooled into thinking there’s nothing to do there. On the light-hearted end, you can access two penguin colonies. On the darker side, Punta Arenas has a colourful history – both industrious and disastrous – with a heavy focus on sea navigation and crimes perpetrated against indigenous populations.
A brief history of Punta Arenas and Tierra del Fuego
Hundreds of years ago, trailblazed by Portuguese sailor Ferdinand Magellan, sailors were making their way around the globe via the Magellan Strait. This route from the Atlantic to the Pacific was shorter and safer than sailing around the tip of the continent. Thus Punta Arenas’ seafaring history was established.
Before western sailors arrived – and in fact for thousands of years beforehand – several indigenous populations inhabited the area on both sides of the Magellan Strait.
After the city of Punta Arenas was formally established in 1843, rumours of gold on Tierra del Fuego drew hordes of European immigrants to the area in the late nineteenth century.
As immigrant numbers increased, the number of indigenous people was decimated in a strategic genocide perpetrated by those who wished to use the indigenous land for their own commercial purposes. This is known as the Selknam Genocide although it affected other populations in addition to the Selknam.
So all in all the recent history of Punta Arenas and Tierra del Fuego is pretty grim. But it’s a vital part of the area’s identity and it’s worth being aware of it before you go.
Getting to Punta Arenas
You can get to Punta Arenas by bus either from Ushuaia to the south (including a ferry crossing across the Magellan Strait) or from Puerto Natales to the north.
Day 1: look around Punta Arenas
On your first day in Punta Arenas, explore what the city has to offer.
First, go for a walk down the seafront. This is filled with monuments to Punta Arenas’ seafaring and exploratory history, including statues of Ernest Shackleton and Ferdinand Magellan. Plaques beside them explain their journeys and celebrate 500 years since Magellan arrived in Punta Arenas.
In the afternoon, embark on a brewery tour to experience some of Patagonia’s famous craft beers. Cervecería Austral is highly rated.
In the evening, you are spoilt for choice of restaurants in Punta Arenas. Unsurprisingly, many of the restaurant menus contain a wide selection of fish and seafood. La Luna was my favourite.
Day 2: Magellanic penguins on Isla Magdalena
As a penguin enthusiast, I was keen to do some penguin tours in Punta Arenas. One of those tours is to Isla Magdalena where there is a colony of Magellanic penguins. I highly recommend a penguin tour in Punta Arenas as it’s one of the few places outside Antarctica where you can see them in the wild.
These penguin tours are undeniably at the pricey end. But you can save a lot by booking directly with the tour company and paying in Chilean pesos.
On my tour, we met at the tour operator’s offices then travelled by bus to a jetty, before boarding a speedboat out into the Magellan Strait.
Before going to Isla Magdalena where the penguins live, we stopped a little way off Isla Marta. This is home to thousands of cormorants and South American sealions (the largest species of sealion in the world). The sealions grunted, honked and splashed, flopping gracelessly over each other and in and out of the sea, all accompanied by the screeching cormorants nesting and circling the tops of the tall cliffs. Truly a racket!
On we went to Isla Magdalena. This island is a national reserve for the Magellanic penguins which nest here. We alighted the boat and were given an hour to walk around the roped path.
Magallenic penguins are the second smallest in the world (the smallest being little penguins in Australia). They migrate to Isla Magdalena in September each year to nest and hatch their chicks. They then return to Peru and Brazil in March for the winter. When I visited in mid-November, they were nesting and the chicks were due to hatch in a week or two.
It was adorable watching the penguins tottering around, occasionally hopping across the path or splashing in the breaking waves.
Back we went to Punta Arenas. The tour took about six hours from start to finish.
Day 3: king penguins on Tierra del Fuego
If you have a third day to spend in Punta Arenas, and you’re a penguin fan, you’ll be pleased to know that you can do another penguin tour, this time to a colony of king penguins near Camerón on Tierra del Fuego.
This is a full-day tour. It involves crossing the Magellan Strait on a ferry to Porvenir then travelling a further 150 kilometres to Camerón, and back again.
The ferry doesn’t run every day and unfortunately it wasn’t running on the days I was in Punta Arenas so there were no tours to the king penguins. But I would have done one if I could!
Some of the king penguin tours make a stop at the Museo Provincial de Tierra del Fuego where (among other things) you can learn more about the Selknam Genocide mentioned above. Although this is a super grim period of Punta Arenas’ history, it is a central part of the history of the region and well worth learning about.
Any questions about this Punta Arenas itinerary? Let me know in the comments!
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