Dientes, Navarino Island

Though we are now back safe and sound from our travels, I wanted to talk about our last few days of our trip on the Island of Navarino and our ferry ride through the beagle canal and straight of magellen. 

The week before we left Patagonia we took a ferry from Ushuaia to Puerto Williams on the island of Navarino. Puerto Williams is the southernmost town on earth, with only a couple more small island separating it from Cape Horn. The ferry ride was short, but in typical South American fashion we arrived a couple hours later than we were supposed to. This meant we started on the trail of Dientes a couple hours later than we wanted to.

The trail Dientes de Navarino is also known as the end of the world trail since it is the southernmost trail on earth (outside of any trails that might exist on Antartica). It has been built up over the last couple years and more people now come to do it, but it is said only 100 hike it per year. Fitness wise I would rate the trail as moderate, it has some climbing, but nothing to hard. What makes the trail so challenging is that 90% of it exists above tree line and hugging the rugged slopes of the mountains. On the trail you are exposed and vulnerable to the weather, which is unpredictable. The winds can be come very high. Since the trail is narrow and rocky one could easily slip and fall with high consequences. 

That being said, we were lucky and had relatively good weather. Unfortunately we did not have 5 days to do the trail. We only had 2 1\2. The only ways off the island are either flying to punta arenas on a small plane, flying to Ushuaia, ferry to punta arenas or ferry to Ushuaia. We were planning to fly to punta arenas, but all the planes were booked in the time frame we needed to fly. We were left with the option of the ferry from Puerto Williams to Punta arenas, which leaves once a week, on Saturdays. So we did as much of the trail as we could in the time frame we had.

The first day we hiked for about 4 hours, we made our own camp in tree line, building a wind shelter and clearing up an area so we could set up our tent. The next day we hiked without our packs further up the trail. We were there in the peak of fall so the trees are beautiful. We hiked through rain, sleet and rain for half the day and hiked past the Diantes peaks. They are some of the most rugged peaks I have seen. The weather cleared up once we turned around. We spent a second night at our campsite and then hiked out the next morning. 

In town we boarded the ferry for Punta arenas. It was on a cargo ship that has a very comfortable passenger section. The ride took about 40 hours and goes through the beagle channel and straight of Magellan. We went through beautiful islands and mountains, watched seals play alongside the boat and saw gorgeous sunsets and sunrises. 

We spent our last few days of vacation in Punta Arenas and Santiago. It was a perfect vacation and we were sad to leave such a beautiful and wonderful land.