Puerto Williams is proud to call itself the southernmost city (‘más Austral’) in the world. It is located 2500km south of Santiago de Chile, on the northern side of a very scarcely populated Isla Navarino – island shaped like a bear. It is on the shore of Beagle channel in the Land of Fire (=Tierra del Fuego).
The island was originally inhabited by Yaghan tribe, whose descendants now live in a village of Villa Ukika on the edge of Puerto Williams. Their language has all but disappeared, only one speaker remains on the whole island.
There is not much happening here. On an asado (= barbecue) organised by the town council we had a little exercise of our Spanish and our liver with local fishermen. The asado was most likely the biggest event this summer 🙂
Next day we set off for the Dientes de Navarino trek with two fellow Czechs,
who we met in the “moustache man” hostel.
Their nickname, which they actually sort of invented themselves, is unfortunately too obscene to be presented at a public blog post 😉
Originally we thought we’ll lose them the first day, but we had a lot of fun together and so went on in the same group all the circuit.
The Dientes circuit is only 36.5 km long, but is usually planned for 5 days. The terrain is pretty tough. But we are even tougher and made it in 4 days 🙂
According to statistics only few hundred trekkers attempt this trail every year, there are only few signs, no other people and you have to carry everything with you. Just like we like it!
Luckily the weather was on our side – no snow or frostbite like we expected, only once there was a little drizzle and always a bitter wind on the mountain passes. Good navigation skills are required along with a decent map for this trail.
1st day, Puerto Williams -> Laguna de Los Dientes (hito 17), distance 11 586 m:
Lazily we took a taxi to the beginning of the trail from where the climb to Cerro Bandera begins. From the top we enjoyed amazing views over the Beagle Channel to Ushuaia, although the freezing wind must have been coming straight from Antarctica. Originally we were planning to spend the night at Laguna del Salto, but we arrived early and fresh and the sun was shining. Therefore we pushed on over to Paso de los Dientes (865 m.a.s.l.) to Laguna de los Dientes for our first campground. We stayed till late by the fire polishing a bottle of rum and observing clear sky with thousands of stars and saw a few of them fall too. However it only got dark around half past midnight and even then on the south of the horizon there was a lot of light. The falling star wish for more rum to make us feel warmer (and even happier) was not fulfilled :-(.
2nd day, Laguna de Los Dientes -> Laguna Martillo (hito 27), distance 20 413 m:
We climbed paso Ventarrón (696 m.a.s.l.) – one of the best views on the trail. Then it was down on a crumbling stony slope. In the valley the trail was full of mud for a change and at times we struggled not to get lost, so we reached Laguna Martillo rather late and tired.
3rd day, Laguna Martillo -> Laguna Los Guanacos (hito 36), distance 28 840 m:
In this part of the trail we bagged the highest part of the whole trek – Paso Virginia (849 m.a.s.l.). The path is difficult – in one part there is a steep climb in the mud, then we lost the trail and only found it after ascending through forest and stones towards the pass. If there was fog it would have been really easy to get lost. Paso Virginia was still snow-covered. After that we only slided down another steep slope to Laguna Los Guanacos and camped nearby.
4th day, return to Puerto Williams:
On the map it looked so close and easy to reach the end of the trail. So we started late except for Zdeněk (one of our Czech friends), who set off really early, because he was so looking forward to a proper toilet and shower. Also his ankle hurt and he was afraid he would slow us down.
The descent was surprisingly tough. Over the trail many trees have fallen down, it was more like monkey bars. And after that we came into meadows crisscrossed by thousands of cattle paths. It was almost impossible to follow the trail there, but there is a road following the whole coast, so we just went straight.
Then it started raining. Luckily we hitched a ride on a pickup to the town. Late afternoon we were already sitting in a pub :). It had a strange incredibly slow waitresses, so we ended up sneaking in wine bottles from shop next door and replacing the bottle on our table…
The Dientes trail was amazing, although it would be much more difficult having bad weather. We did not meet another soul (even beavers hid themselves) – very refreshing after the crowds in Torres and Fitz Roy.
Leaving Puerto Williams was a bit complicated. We could not find any cheap way to go away – there is one small flight a day, once a week the Yaghan ferry which we came with, or daily sickeningly expensive small ships to Ushuaia – so we hung around Puerto Williams a while longer. We rented bikes to follow the coast road. And we were lucky, when Viktor was observing beatles on the shore, who walked normal on dry land, but swam upside down with belly upwards, a group of whales came to have a look at us few meters from the shore. We also visited a bird colony.
In the end we left PW on the expensive boat to Ushuaia (100 USD per person for 30 minute ride), we were unable to hitch a yacht…
P.S. Viktor sent a query to the Faculty of Natural Sciences in Prague to discover the specie of whale we saw in the Beagle channel on 5-Feb-2017. Pretty detailed answer from one the specialist on sea mammals came back 🙂
Based on them, it could have been one of these:
- sei whale (Balaenoptera borealis -> B. borealis schlegellii)
- fin whale
- Bryde’s whale
- Antarctic minke whale (Balaenoptera bonaerensis)
But our further research proved that it was the sei whale!
Imagine, what a monster must have been lurking under the surface… 🙂
