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Things to do in Caleta Tortel

Why you should go

Ninety seconds on Caleta Tortel

A village with no streets, built on the steep side of a fjord where the Baker river meets the sea, its houses joined by seven kilometres of cypress boardwalk and stairs. Cars stop at the top; everything below moves on foot or by boat. It was founded in 1955 to ship cypress timber and the wood is still the material of everything. Boats leave the jetties for the two glaciers and for the island where the workers of a 1906 timber expedition are buried.

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Things to do

4
  1. Glaciar Jorge Montt

    Landmark · 7 hr

    The northernmost outlet glacier of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, calving into a fjord of floating ice about three hours south of the village by boat. It has retreated more than twenty kilometres in a century and is one of the fastest-shrinking in Chile; trips run in summer only, weather permitting, and take most of a day on the water.

  2. Glaciar Steffen

    Landmark · 6 hr

    A glacier of the Northern Ice Field reached by boat up the Huemules river and then on foot, with the walk to the lagoon at its snout taking about an hour each way through cold forest. It is quieter than Jorge Montt and closer to the village, and operators combine it with the delta in a single long day.

  3. Isla de los Muertos

    Island · 2.5 hr

    A small forested island in the Baker delta holding the wooden crosses of about thirty labourers who died there in 1906 on a timber company's expedition, in circumstances never settled. Boats from the village take about twenty minutes each way, with a boardwalk through the graves; it is a national monument and the boatmen carry the story.

  4. Pasarelas de Caleta Tortel

    Landmark · 1.5 hr

    The boardwalks themselves, about seven kilometres of Guaitecas cypress walkway and stairs linking every house, the school and the church along the fjord's edge, with viewpoints on the two hills at either end. They are slippery in rain, which is most days, and the climb back to the car park at the top is the village's only steep walk.

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