There's a new check-in point at the bottom of the map. Silversea, the luxury expedition cruise line, has opened The Cormorant at 55 South, a 150-room hotel in Puerto Williams on Chile's Isla Navarino — officially the southernmost city on Earth, sitting on the Beagle Channel beneath the jagged Dientes de Navarino peaks. It opened on 5 November with local folk music, schoolchildren singing the anthem and a ribbon handwoven by artisans from junco fibres.
The hotel is a first for Silversea and a big upgrade for a town that previously had very limited places to stay. It was built with Chilean investors using modular construction: every room was manufactured in Mendoza, Argentina, then hauled across the Andes and Patagonia to the far south. Each one looks out over either the Beagle Channel or the forest, and interiors lean on local materials and Chilean art, with large-scale works by Paola Vezzani, Cata Flaño and Javier Canales.
The main purpose is logistical. The Cormorant is now the base for Silversea's Antarctica Fly Cruise programme. Guests arrive on a charter flight, overnight at the hotel, then fly across the Drake Passage to join their expedition ship — skipping the two days of rough sailing each way that a conventional cruise from South America requires. They stay again at the hotel on the return. Most rooms are held for these passengers, though the line says a handful may be released to independent travellers heading for Chile's deep south.
Food and drink follow the same local theme: restaurant Latitude 55 (named for the 55th parallel) serves regional dishes and Chilean asado, Bar Sur pours wines from across the country, and the Fireplace lounge frames the Patagonian landscape through big windows. Outdoors there's kayaking on the Beagle Channel, horse riding and hiking on the Seno Lauta coastal trails, with cormorants, dolphin gulls and upland geese to spot — fitting for a hotel named after the shaggy seabird that thrives here.
For travellers, this matters in two ways. If you're dreaming of Antarctica but dreading the Drake Passage, the fly-cruise setup turns one of the world's great sea crossings into a short flight, with a genuinely comfortable hotel at either end. And for anyone exploring Chilean Patagonia beyond the usual Torres del Paine circuit, Puerto Williams suddenly has accommodation that matches — a frontier town with frontier scenery and, now, high-end beds.
