The Most Beautiful End of the World

Synopsis

Chile’s Magallanes region is known as “end of the world” – for good reason. This remote wilderness lies at the very southern tip of the South American continent between the Strait of Magellan and Cape Horn. It is a harsh land of breathtaking natural beauty.

Here, colossal glaciers plunge into deep blue fjords, and the shores are home to penguins, seals, and sea elephants. Along the west coast vast swamps teem with millions of seabirds, while in the shadow of the Andes expansive steppes provide a habitat for guanacos – the wild ancestors of llamas. Guanacos live in groups led by a dominant male; their lives are shaped by constant battles for dominance – and the threat of pumas.

The icy breath of Antarctica is felt all through the Magallanes, yet dense rainforests thrive along the Pacific coast. The climate on the steep slopes of the southern Andes is cold and wet, allowing ancient plants like false beech and Chilean river cedars to flourish. These forests are also home to the smallest deer in the world, the pudu, and the southern Andean deer.

Despite the grandeur of its forests and mountains, southern Chile is fundamentally a water world. The Strait of Magellan, the only natural waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific in the Americas, winds over 600 kilometres through a maze of islands and rugged coastlines.

Magdalena Island hosts over a hundred thousand breeding Magellanic penguins each year, while Chile’s largest colony of southern elephant seals gathers on a secluded beach beneath a glacier. The seals return from the open sea in October and November. On shore, three-and-a-half-ton bulls will engage in fierce territorial battles. At the same time a remarkable spectacle unfolds off Carlos III Island when humpback whales, accompanied by sea lions and hundreds of seabirds, hunt for krill and small fish.

As the land fragments into thousands of pieces in the last two hundred kilometres towards the south, it is crowned by natural wonders like the immense Marinelli Glacier. The glacier’s forty-meter-high ice wall rises out of a deep, dark blue fjord.

Cape Horn, the last outpost of land before the Drake Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific, is a near-mythical site for seafarers. A solitary lighthouse is perched on the 425-metre-high cliffs of Hornos, the southernmost island of the Americas. Here, a Chilean navy employee and his family are the only residents. Out to sea, the great hunters of the southern ice seas, albatrosses, skuas, leopard seals, orcas, and white-bellied dolphins, dominate the waters. These dolphins are found only in the cold southern waters of Chile, with their range ending at Cape Horn. This is truly the end of the world, where wildlife rules and humans are rare visitors.

A Terra Mater Studios / Cosmos Factory production