This Explora Expedition takes travelers to the Southernmost tip of South America.

After Germán Genskowski and his family decided to set up a homestead on the island of Tierra del Fuego in 1985, it took him four years to build a cabin using hand-sawn timber from the surrounding mountains. He brought tools and appliances into the area bit by bit, traveling two days by boat from the port city of Punta Arenas, on the mainland, to the jetty at Caleta María, where his father, an immigrant from Poland, had worked as a logger in the 1940s. Genskowski then carried materials for another day along the Azopardo river, almost to the border of Argentina. The nearest settlement from the cabin was three days away on horseback.

Genskowski, his wife, and their children returned to Punta Aransas every winter. Genskowski, however, stayed at the cabin. He was frequently cut off from the outside world by several foot of snow. He is one of the few remaining settlers in the sparsely-populated Chilean part of the island.

On a trip across the country, I had a chance to meet Genskowski. He was now 80 years old. Tierra del Fuego Explora is a company which leads South American expeditions. When a gravel road reached his property in 2004 he shrugged at the change. He said, “I didn’t like it very much.” “I was happy with things as they were.”

Things have gotten easier in this isolated part of the island, certainly—a welcome development for Genskowski since a riding accident a decade ago left him unable to mount a horse—but ease was never the point. Our expedition leader, Nicolás Vigil, summed it up when he recited an old Chilean saying before we embarked on our journey: Quien se apura en la Patagonia, pierde su tiempo—”who rushes in Patagonia“It’s a waste of their time.”

Our group of four travelers, staying at Hotel La Yegua Loca in Punta Arenas on the first night, gathered to discuss the days ahead. They discussed a ferry ride across the Strait of Magellan, which separates Tierra del Fuego and the rest of continent, a drive through the pampas and a trip on a fishing vessel into the fjords near Admiralty Sound. The team also talked about hiking up the snow-covered mountains and through the forests of Karukinka This is a 735,00-acre conservation area which receives only 900 visitors per year. We would explore the landscapes of this region in greater depth with each excursion.

Explora It opened its first lodge in Torres del Paine National Park in Chilean Patagonia 30 years ago. Since then, it has expanded to northern Chile, Argentina and Bolivia as well as Rapa Nui (often called Easter Island). The company quickly gained a reputation for nature-forward design and a commitment to ecological conservation. Explora Expeditions aims to transport small groups of people into some the world’s most remote environments. The Tierra del Fuego itinerary was the first of this kind to launch; Sebastián Navarro, an expedition manager with the brand, worked on it for more than a year. 

We took the ferry early the next morning to Porvenir. Porvenir is the largest settlement on Chilean territory of Tierra del Fuego. The other half of the island belongs to Argentina. We drove south, through the austere countryside where llamalike guanacos roamed on grassland alongside slate-gray sea. I saw tortured ñires, A native shrub bent sideways as if it had been pushed by the wind. It didn’t take long before colors began to bloom across the landscape. It was like walking out of a darkened room and into the blazing sun. Forests of lenga beeches blazed in auburn and ocher—it was autumn in the Southern Hemisphere—and wisps of lichen, draped over their branches like gauze, glowed celadon green. Roberto de la Cerda of Explora guided us to a rocky peak just below. He showed us the way mountainsides can be read as open ledgers for geologic time. Twilight lasted for hours. Even the grayscale of distant fog seemed luminous.

As the landscape came into focus, so too did its contrasts—between the ageless and the ephemeral, an ancient topography and a changeable climate. Vigil explained to me that the green clovers, purple lupines, and white yarrows growing by the roadside had all been introduced in the 19th Century by sheep farmers. In just a few decades, the brutal expansionism by the settlers had decimated Indigenous Selk’nams, who’d been here for 10,000 years. 

Ariel Ramirez, Explora’s staffer, had decorated the cabins with towels, sheets and toiletries taken from Explora’s lodges. Emanuel Mellado was the chef at Explora’s lodge in the Atacama DesertPrepared decadent meals such as seared guanaco rib-eye steaks and snow crab pasta.

We boarded the repurposed fishing vessel the next morning in the early hours of the dawn. Alakush, Sailing west against the breeze, we entered Admiralty Sound then down into Parry Bay. Both bays were dotted with snowcapped peaks which looked like they had been thrust out of the water. The morning sky was clear, but clouded up as we entered a narrow fjord, where frosty winds blew off the glaciers that guarded its southern end. 

Stepping ashore, we followed the banks of a rushing river, opaque with minerals and sediment, until we reached its glacial source; I could see the ice calving into a metal-gray lagoon. 

Here’s a look at the past Alakush, I was standing on the deck with Danilo Bhamonde who helps on chartered trips from spring to fall. He first visited this area in the 1970s as a young teenager. The glacier stretched to the fjord about a half mile away. He was stoic, but unmistakably amazed by the landscape that he has known for most of his adult life. “You become accustomed to seeing things disappear.” Genskowski then told us that evening, back at the cabin. It was not uncommon for winter snows to start in April. In April, the autumn foliage just began to emerge.

Not all change is bad. New national parks were opened in the Archipelago over the past few years. In September of 2023, the descendants of Selk’nam won official recognition as Chile’s First Peoples. It was a radical reversal. That gravel road near the Genskowskis’ property is still advancing, albeit at barely 3,000 feet per year. He worries about the potential tourism boom that it could bring. Still, on our final night, gathered around the fire where he had spent the better of the day spit-roasting a lamb culled from his flock, that future seemed mercifully remote. 

We headed north the next morning. We crossed the mountain passes that separate Genskowskis and the rest of world. We passed the summit, where the day before we had climbed through ankle-deep fresh snow in a bright sun. We boarded the turboprop for Punta Arenas after returning to the pampas. 

During our short 40-minute flight, I kept pressing my forehead against the window to watch the mountains melt into grassland. The hours and days that had dilated so spectacularly on the ground snapped into metronomic order—too fast, too rushed, each second a lost opportunity to look more closely. Below, rivers almost black in color meandered their way across the pampas.

This story was first published in July 2025 issue Travel + Leisure Living on the Edge” is the subtitle.