Chile Guide
Tierra del Fuego
Isla Navarino
Apart from tiny Puerto Williams and a few estancias along the northern coast, ISLA NAVARINO, the largish island to the south of Isla Grande, is an uninhabited wilderness studded with barren peaks and isolated valleys. Covering about 4000 square kilometres, virtually unspoilt and mostly inaccessible, Navarino is dominated by a dramatic range of peaks, the Cordón Dientes del Perro ("Dog's Teeth Rampart") through which weaves a 70-kilometre hiking trail called the Los Dientes Circuit. A sign of the remoteness of the island is the fact that this trail is more the result of wandering indigenous guanacos than of man. What has spoilt some of the landscape, especially the woodland, however, is the devastation brought about by feral beavers, originally introduced from Canada for fur-farming. Once protected but now hunted extensively – and sold for their meat and their pelts – these cuddly looking but destructive animals have gnawed through countless tree trunks, and their dams cause terrible flooding.
The quickest and most reliable way to get to Isla Navarino is to fly (CH$38,000 one-way) with DAP from Punta Arenas to Puerto Williams, a spectacular journey when the weather is good, and bumpy when it's bad. In summer, flights depart at 3pm Tuesday to Saturday. In winter, there are flights Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. A ferry travels from Punta Arenas once a week; it departs Punta Arenas Wednesday at 6pm and returns from Puerto Williams on Saturday at 10pm; (around 36hr; fares start at US$120). COMAPA also runs a four-day luxury cruise on the Terra Australis ( 
www.australis.com ), from US$681 per person. You might be lucky and catch a ride on a private boat crossing from Ushuaia, but don't count on this. Also, with Chilean-Argentine relations continually thawing, long-promised scheduled crossings between the rival southernmost towns might soon be a reality, so check with the tourist information offices in Ushuaia and Punta Arenas.