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Isla Navarino
Written by sophie et jeremy   
Tuesday, 16 January 2018

In order to go even more south after spending Christmas eve in Tierra del fuego, we decide to go and celebrate new year on Navarino island, in the Chilean cape Horn province. It’s beautiful, rugged and of course not too touristic.

Dientes 5 Dientes 5

From Punta Arenas, the biggest Chilean city in the area, we take a ferry that reach the island after 30 hours sailing in between Chilean fjords. It hasn’t been seamless, as the booking system is not intelligible at all, we eventually got a confirmation 3 hours before the departure. We leave the car, and take our backpacks and our trekking gear with us.

Once on board, we enjoy, more or less reclining seats, 5 star food (mainly white bread), Spanish movies and loud American neighbors... Fortunately, there’s a great view from the deck : we are surrounded by snow-capped green mountains, leaping into the sea, scattered this ice fields. The boat even stops in front of a glacier leaping into the beagle channel for a while so we can enjoy the scenery. So we spent a night somewhere in the Magellan strait, and that won’t happen to us anytime soon.

italian glacier italian glacier

Once in Puerto Williams, we understand there’s nothing much to do except eating good pizzas at Hedi ’s. And that’s what we came here for : trekking in the wild.

After packing our bags, we go for the 5 days hike “dientes de Navarino”. That’s a pretty trek in the mountains, lakes and forest, very wild and nearly too much : the track is almost non existent and not really maintained, sometimes very muddy or dangerous. In addition, the weather here is really unpredictable, with sunshine, rain and hail many times within the same day. There’s only one constant, it’s cold and humid at night, so we make the 3 last days in 2 and save us one night. We come back in Puerto Williams covered with mud.

Dientes 1 Dientes 1 Dientes 2 Dientes 2

Dientes 3 Dientes 3 Dientes 4 Dientes 4

Dientes 6 Dientes 6 Dientes 7 Dientes 7

Dientes 8 Dientes 8 Dientes 9 Dientes 9

Dientes 10 Dientes 10 Dientes 11 Dientes 11

Dientes 12 Dientes 12

After cleaning up and eating pizzas, we go back to the mainland by plane, flying over the cordilerra Darwin and its giants ice fields.

Navarino Island Navarino Island Darwin cordilera Darwin cordilera