As much as it may sound like I’m about to go off on another liberal rant about the destruction of all we know and hold dear, this is not a story about Donald Trump or even Elon Musk, as much as they each fully deserve every disapprobation any of us can muster. One of the unexpected pleasures of being on this cruise is that, despite Viking Live TV having all the news services from Fox News the MSNBC, there is little or no compunction to stay current on the latest Washington shenanigans. Obviously, the knock-on impacts like the roiling of the stock market might be of interest, but unless you’re an active trader and stupid enough to keep open position while on a ship in remote waters where the only internet connection is via Elon’s Starlink, there ain’t much to do about the market anyway. And remember, Elon likes to use Starlink to advance his economic and political agenda as he has in Ukraine and has just threatened to do as well in Poland. Such is the oligarchical arrangements we are allowing to govern our existence and future, so we might as well just relax in our deck chairs and enjoy the ride as best we can.
Today we are in Punta Arenas, the commercial center of Chilean Patagonian life, and the best natural port along the Magellan Straights (previously called Todos Los Santos Straight). This passage to the Pacific was discovered by Magellan in 1520. Think about that in the context of Columbus discovering America in 1492. In only 28 years (the time it takes to make 5 or 6 round trip voyages by sail to and from Europe), the aggressive Spaniards and Portuguese were so anxious for discovery that they found their way all the way south to the southern tip of the hemisphere standing between them and the riches of the day to be found in the spices of the East Indies (modern day Philippines). Admirably enough, no one has since found a more efficient passage than this to get around the continent. Obviously, the Panama Canal, likely to be renamed soon as the American Canal, is a shorter route, but that was cheating by cutting a shortcut.
When you look at a map of this archipelago, you wonder why the British found it necessary to discover a less efficient route through the more southerly Beagle Channel a hundred years later. I suppose in those days it was advantageous to stay out of sight if the Spaniards, who had fortified Punta Arenas in order to control the Straight. Maybe they also hoped to find gold in them thar island hills. In another two hundred years, Sir Francis Drake decided he needed to go even further south around the treacherous waters off Cape Horn. Hence the Drake Passage. So it took three hundred years to continuously redefine the end of the world. I guess we think of it as such since we are mostly a Northern Hemisphere world and going to southern extremes seems more remote than heading north. Strangely enough, we are told that the weather down here, while never tropical or balmy, it also doesn’t get that much snow and wintery weather. That must be a function of the warmer sea currents from the South Pacific because one would think the proximity to Antarctica would make the weather much more severe.
The more notable extreme seems to be the low-lying flora that blankets the region. We saw it on the hills along the fjords coming south. There is a noticeable absence of trees (or what we would call trees) and most of the vegetation is one form of scrub or another. It gives the area a sort of tundra look and feel, which seems appropriate for the end of the world. Our tour today is billed as Straight of Magellan Park, so we headed south along the eastern shore of the Brunswick Peninsula. That follows the path. of the Straight of Magellan as it wends its way through the archipelago between the Atlantic and Pacific. The shoreline we traveled on is called Aqua Fresca, in honor of the free-flowing water that passes by. We headed to Punta Saint Ana, which is where Fuerte Bulnes is located. This fort was built by the Chileans during their early days of independence by their President Bulnes, who determined that controlling the Straight at this particular 2.5 km-wide choke-point Was critical for the national defense of Chile. The early 19th century Fort looks pretty much like what you would see up in the wilderness areas of the Adirondacks. Wooden balustrades with dangerously pointed tops, various outbuildings for storing supplies and housing troops, and, of course, a number of cannons pointed out towards the Straight to threaten privateers, and perhaps even scare off the occasional man-o-war from some rogue European power. When I asked if the fort had seen action, I got a somewhat nationalistic and sketchy reply that told me that this was another national expenditure made mostly for show and to aggrandize some nationalist leader of the moment. It was all a fun viewing spot nonetheless.
After a quick rest stop at the visitor center, which also overlooked the Straight, we went back along the shores of Aqua Fresca to the nondescript port town of Punta Arenas to board our Viking ship, leaving enough time for it to depart on its way across the Argentine border to Ushuaia on the southern side of Tierra del Fuego.
This is one of those places in the world where one feels compelled to travel to see it and to say one has seen it. I’m not so sure it’s different than standing on the shores of Nova Scotia or some island in Alaska, but we are all steeped in our modern civilization courses as children, with the knowledge of Ferdinand Magellan and his first circumnavigation of the globe as well as the heritage of both the European traders and early Colonialists of America who needed to get to the Pacific and therefore spent time and sometimes lives rounding Cape Horn rather than heading east around the bottom of Africa. It just feels like a place that one should go in one’s lifetime, so here we are. The process of demystifying a place and making it somewhat familiar is I suppose what travel is supposed to do for us. I’m sure I will think of the spot every time I hear the word Magellan.
As for this being the end of the world, it certainly does have that look and feel but I’m happy to say that I think the sun will come up tomorrow. I prefer to think of this as the edge of the world rather than the end of the world and that we are here looking out towards Antarctica with the wonder of a species that has not always shown a great deal of care for this planet of ours (God knows our Eco-footprints, even on this trip, are simply too big to be justified). At least we can look out from a place like this and hope that others will come after us to share the wonders of history, nature and archeology in a place that does sit very close to the end of the world.