Puerto San Julián
Few ports along the Patagonian coast carry as much historical weight as Puerto San Julián. Ferdinand Magellan arrived here on 31 March 1520 with a fleet of five ships and spent the winter — five months in total — while attempting to hold his fractious, largely Spanish crew together under his Portuguese command. The stay did not go smoothly. A rebellion broke out, resulting in an execution and two exiles. The following day after arrival, Palm Sunday, the first Catholic mass on what would become Argentine territory was celebrated on shore. The town was declared a national historic site in 1943 on the strength of it. Magellan's encounter with the local Tehuelche people during those months produced the name that would eventually give the whole region its identity: the Portuguese navigator called the tall, fur-clad people "Patagonians," likely drawing on a Spanish chivalric novel of the time, and the name stuck to everything south of the Río Colorado.
Fifty-eight years after Magellan, Francis Drake put in at San Julián on essentially the same pretext — a winter stop, a rebellious crew — and executed his own troublesome officer, Thomas Doughty, on the same patch of coastline. The small island visible in the bay, now called Isla Justicia, holds the graves of two captains executed by Magellan in 1520 and the remains of Doughty from 1578. It is also a resting ground for terns, cormorants, oystercatchers, and skuas.
Charles Darwin came ashore here too, in January 1834 aboard HMS Beagle, and explored the cliffs near the harbour. He found fossil bones that he initially attributed to a mastodon; Richard Owen later identified them as belonging to a large camel-like creature he named Macrauchenia — one of the discoveries that fed into Darwin's developing theory.
Within the town, the Museo Temático Nao Victoria is the standout attraction: a full-scale replica of the ship that anchored in this bay 500 years ago, fitted out with reproductions of instruments, artillery, everyday objects, and figures from Magellan's crew. The surrounding sound environment recreates something of the atmosphere of the period. The Museo Regional Rosa Novak holds archaeological and historical material from the town and region, including the Florida Blanca collection — documentation of the short-lived Spanish colonial settlement established 10 kilometres northwest of the current town in 1780 by order of Viceroy Vértiz, populated with some 200 families, and abandoned by 1784.
The waterfront promenade runs along the bay. A monument at one end of the coastal avenue marks the site of the first mass. Boat excursions operate to Isla Cormorán, where a Magellanic penguin colony nests from October through April, and to Isla Justicia. Commerson's dolphins — small, black-and-white, and unusually approachable — are frequently seen in the bay.