ENRICO MARTINO

Chile’s “End of the World” begins south of Puerto Montt and Chiloè, a mythical place of the Chilean identità. Here was born also Francisco Coloane, the writer that narrated like no other this extreme world. The vertical universe of the Chilean Patagonia, a thin piece of land crushed between the waves of the Pacific and 18,000 square kilometers of glaciers is a remote world where only a ferry transports cars and trucks until Puerto Natales and Chilean Tierra del Fuego. South of Bearle Channel, in northern coast of Navarino Island, the small town of Puerto Williams is the southermost place of the Earth, even further south of Ushuaia which boasts of the world's southernmost city title. So even though Ushuaia is large and Puerto Williams is small, the Chileans feel a secret satisfaction with Argentine cousins. Only from Puerto Williams you can take the extreme luxury of watching the End of the World the other side, from the south, less than two thousand inhabitants, a cluster of houses, a microscopic Macondo Southern, Puerto Williams is all here, with two tracks meandering along the shores of the Beagle channel. One ends in Puerto Navarino, where live two families of the Chilean navy, the other in the grass of Caleta Eugenia, where a tiny house with a red roof puts an end to the last of the Americas road.