Punta Arenas strings ropes between buildings so pedestrians survive the wind
On the Strait of Magellan, gusts can reach 130 km/h, so officials in Punta Arenas put up ropes between downtown buildings for people to hold. The Chilean city, founded as a penal colony, is the largest in the world south of the 46th parallel and a jumping-off point for Antarctica.
Its name is a translation. The English navigator John Narborough, sailing in 1669 to 1671, described a low, sandy spit with a few trees, which he called Sand-Point; Spanish speakers rendered Sandy Point as Punta Arenosa, later Punta Arenas. Spain had tried to hold the strait much earlier. A settlement later nicknamed Port Famine, about 80 kilometres to the south, collapsed so completely that the English privateer Thomas Cavendish rescued its last survivor in 1587.
Chile returned in 1843, when the schooner Ancud carried 21 people south to build a fort, and in 1848 the governor moved the settlement to its present site and gave it its current name. For years it served as a penal colony and a punishment posting for unruly soldiers, and it endured deadly mutinies in 1851 and 1877. Land grants from 1867 drew settlers, first mostly British, then, after 1906, more Croatians. The city is said to have the largest proportion of people of Croatian descent anywhere outside Croatia and the former Yugoslavia, and one sheep company run from here eventually held 3 million hectares and over two million sheep.
Before the Panama Canal, steamships between the Atlantic and Pacific refuelled with coal here. Today the harbour serves cruise ships and scientific expeditions, and Punta Arenas shares the role of Antarctic gateway with Ushuaia and Christchurch. It has been a free port since 1977, and it once had so many red metal roofs it was called the city of the red roofs.
The climate is subpolar and oddly steady, with July lows near −1 °C and January highs of 14 °C, and only 380 mm of precipitation thanks to the Andes' rain shadow. After 1986 it became the first sizeable city directly affected by ozone thinning. The 2024 census counted 132,363 residents, and the city even has the world's southernmost Hindu temple.
Source: Punta Arenas
