“Tierra del Fuego’s turbulent history encompasses missionaries, gold rushes, epidemics, polar explorers and devastating rodents”
High above the glinting rooftops of Puerto Williams, the summit of Cerro Bandera – ‘Flag Hill’ – was dusted with snow, racked by gale-force winds and utterly deserted. Still puffing from a precipitous hike through a forest of beech trees, I sheltered behind a half-collapsed cairn and watched a faded Chilean flag thrash at its pole like a fish on a hook. Nearby, a stream of snow-melt trickled over the stony terrain, which was chequered with moss, the only plant hardy enough to grow in the sub-polar tundra.
To the north, on the opposite shore of the Beagle Channel, was the Argentine side of Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost tip of South America. I snapped a few photos before turning 180 degrees to face the Dientes de Navarino, a range of fang-like mountains, the last gasp of the Andes. Aside from a few Chilean naval officers on Cape Horn and a handful of scientists at Antarctic research stations, there was nobody between me and the South Pole.
Beneath Patagonia, across the choppy Strait of Magellan, South America crumbles into a labyrinth of sparsely populated islands,
