Legend
says…
Since in an October day in 1520 Ferdinand Magellan was the first European to cross from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, many seafaring explorers and adventurers followed him discovering what we know today as Patagonia. Sparsely populated even 500 years after its discovery, Patagonia remains an untouched, vast, exotic, wild and mystical land of beauty and adventure.
For those audacious seafarers that have cruised the legendary Patagonian Fjords in recent times, we proudly recognize them as Captains of Patagonia as they kindly share their adventures and experiences for the benefit of future visiting mariners.
hISTORY
After Magellan made it through the Magellan Straits, he started exploring the region coming upon a land inhabited by “giants so tall that the tallest of us only came up to their waist”. This region, north of the 330nm long strait, was thereafter known as Patagonia, named after the fictional giant ‘Patagon’ who was famous in Spanish novels at the time. The region south of the straits was labeled ‘Tierra del Fuego’ (Land of Fire), after Magellan spotted numerous glowing campfires during dark and overcast nights.
Explorers like Francis Drake, James Cook, Louis Antoine de Bougainville, Robert Fitzroy, Charles Darwin, Joshua Slocum – to name a few – gave names to landmarks found on the charts such as Cape Horn, Drake Passage, Beagle Channel, Pio XI glacier, English Narrows, and many more.
Before these adventurers made their mark, the land was inhabited by indigenous groups such as the Yagan and Selk’nam in Tierra del Fuego, and the Alakaluf and Chonos in the rest of Patagonia. The centuries that followed saw waves of immigrants from northern and central Europe blending with the native population to create a mixed culture.
Geography
Patagonia is a sparsely populated and diverse region at the southern end of South America, shared by Chile and Argentina, separated by the outrun of the longest mountain range in the world, the Andes mountains, which also creates a natural border between the two countries.
The Argentinean Patagonia is dominated by a semiarid scrub plateau that covers nearly all of the southern portion of mainland Argentina, it constitutes a vast area of steppe and desert that extends south from latitude 37° to 51° S.
The Chilean Patagonia, like the rest of the country, is much narrower with the Andes sinking dramatically into the Pacific Ocean to create a unique geography formed by an extensive array of archipelagos, channels and pristine fjords.
Stunning landscapes, Patagonian forests and native wildlife abound in this wilderness, and highlights worth exploring include the Chiloé archipelago, Torres del Paine glaciers of the northern and the southern icefields, Tierra del Fuego, Cape Horn, and all of its 17 Patagonia National Parks.
With about 207,000 square kilometers of land – an area larger than the United Kingdom. The Chilean Patagonia stretches over 1,700 km in length between Puerto Montt and Cape Horn representing 36% of the Chilean continental territory, but only 4% of its population.