La Isla Navarino

Buenas Tardes! Good afternoon!

We are back from a long trek in the mountains on the Isla Navarino (Navarino Island). Isla Navarino lies just across the Beagle Channel south of Ushuaia. It is actually in the country of Chile, and the border between the two countries lies in the middle of the channel. We travelled there on a boat over the Beagle Channel to complete a hike near the Dientes, which are large rock formations that look like giant teeth coming out of the earth. In fact, dientes means teeth in Spanish. Here is a picture of the boat we took over the channel.

We spent 8 days hiking across the island from the north to the south. A trail begins just outside the small town of Puerto Williams on the north coast. Do you remember from the last entry that Ushuaia is said to be the southernmost city in the world? Well that´s only partly true. Puerto Williams is actually further south, though it´s not a city but a very small town. The Chilean Navy has a base there and many people stop there when sailing around the islands. There are lovely views across the channel from town.

From Puerto Williams we hiked up into rocky passes above the treeline. Treeline is the altitude where vegetation stops because it is too cold for plants to grow above it. Depending upon where you are in the world the elevation of treeline is different. In colder climates, like here, it is lower because you don´t have to go very high before temperatures get low enough to prevent plant growth. Down here it is very low--less then 2000 feet. In warmer parts of the world treeline is much higher. It was in these high passes that we got beautiful views of the Dientes and surrounding mountains.

Eventually we made our way down to a refugio, or small hut, near the Lago Windhond. A lago is a lake. Once we reached the refugio we spent two days relaxing and fishing for trout in the lake. Nathan caught a few and we had a delicious trout dinner one night! After resting up there we decided to walk down to the southern coast of the Isla Navarino to the Bahia Windhond. A bahia is a bay. There is no trail to the bay so we needed to use our map and compass to navigate over land. It was a lot of fun and we walked through small forests, peat bogs and lake shores to reach the enormous bay.

That night we camped out on the beach and could look out across the bay to see the Wollaston Islands. This island chain is where Cape Horn lies. (Look back to the last entry if you forgot what makes Cape Horn special.) Because we were looking out beyond the end of the South American continent the ocean we saw was actually both the Atlantic and the Pacific coming together! If you look on a map, you´ll see that the Atlantic Ocean runs down the eastern side of South America, and the Pacific is along the western coast. But when you reach the end of the continent they come together.

After the trip to the bay we took a few more days to walk back north to Puerto Williams. We passed through more peat bogs, mountains, and lots of beaver ponds, too. Beavers were introduced to Isla Navarino many years ago in hopes of creating a fur trade. But the idea was abandoned and now the beavers have flourished and caused a lot of destruction. They are not native to the island so their activities hurt the wildlife and plants that grow there naturally.

The trek we did is considered to be the most southern in the world, so we feel very lucky to have been able to go there. The island is still very wild and very few people venture back into the mountains. In fact, we saw nobody else during the last three days of our hike. But we were happy to get back to town for showers, fresh foods and a real bed!