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Región de Magallanes - CHILE
Región de Magallanes - CHILE

MAGALLANES is the largest province of Chile, with 132,033 square kilometers on American soil, whose surface area increases by 1,250,000 square kilometers on the Antarctic continent, from the South Shetland Islands to the South Pole itself.


Magallanes has the third largest amount of fresh or drinkable water in the world after the poles, in its SOUTHERN ICE FIELDS . It is the province of Chile that has the most complicated geography, with its numerous green archipelagos, its lonely channels, its frozen fjords and its wild seas, right up to the very edges of the ice. It has the most capricious climates, which can be observed along more than seven parallels, from Wellington Island to Cape Horn, in the American sector, to end in the immense frozen continent, with its eternal whiteness.


*** INFORMATION: You can check on YouTube a description of the strait, a tourist project


Magellan was the first Chilean land found by the Spanish navigators of the 16th century, led by the intrepid Fernando Magellan, who arrived with his fleet in 1520, 16 years before the historic voyage of Diego de Almagro, who discovered Chile from the north . And with him began a beautiful story, full of admirable epics. The settings for these coasts, the channels, the fjords and the seas that surround the archipelago.


From the south of the Gulf of Penas, islands of the most whimsical shapes break away from the mainland due to ancient and strange cataclysms. An immense maze of winding channels surprises the traveller, who finds twisted routes, high islets crowned with intense vegetation, enormous inlets with extensive beaches, snowdrifts that slowly throw their thousand-year-old ice into the sea, cliffs where the incessant winds bounce. Then, flat sea; blue waves; skirmishes. And often rain, which covers the landscape with grey, impenetrable veils.


Wellington, Madre de Dios, Chatham, Santa Inés, Hannover, Piazzi and Desolación correspond to the geographical nomenclature of the south. But these places were found by the first navigators, the ancient inhabitants of the labyrinth, the Alacalufes (Kawésqar). Indians in canoes, who arrived in very ancient times, when the southern prow of Chile had not yet been broken by the innumerable islets that surround the complicated coastline. Then come the Strait and Tierra del Fuego, also populated since remote times by the oldest and most primitive human races.


*** INFORMATION The canoeing people Kawésqar People, or wrongly called Los Alacalufes,


These seas, these coasts, were the scenes that saw the ships of the discoverers and navigators pass by on heavy voyages, fighting against the elements and adversity. This was the case with Magellan , with Jofré de Loaiza, Ladrillero, Sarmiento de Gamboa , Drake, Cavendish, Parker King and Fitz Roy , until the fragile schooner Ancud took possession in 1843, in Punta Santa Ana and Fuerte Bulnes was founded. The first Chilean population of the Strait of Magellan is today a prosperous province, with 88,706 inhabitants (1983). Its main activities are cattle ranching and oil. It has large population centers, the main one Punta Arenas, rightly called "The Pearl of the Strait." But for this to be so, time has had to pass and men have to spend their lives building history.


This is what we will now discuss in a brief summary.



*** TOURISM: You can tour Fuerte Bulnes, visit Miradores, and its VISITOR CENTER with the History of the Strait of Magellan. Click link: www.parquedelestrecho.cl

 

*** TOURISM: You can visit the Nao Victoria Museum, full-size replicas of Magellan's ships, Fitz Roy, Goleta Ancud, among others. / Click link: https://g.co/kgs/2PrdGKa

 
 
 

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