Puerto San Julian bay house

Puerto San Julian is one of the great natural harbours of the Atlantic: an eleven-kilometre bay almost closed off from the ocean, where Magellan overwintered in 1520 and Drake anchored sixty years later. Today it is a town of eight thousand on the Santa Cruz coast, with a replica of the Nao Victoria on the waterfront, a wide bay of flat blue-grey water, and an island reserve where Magellanic penguins, cormorants and steamer ducks breed within sight of the pier.

The house is a hundred and five square metre single-storey build on a quiet street four blocks from the bay: three bedrooms, one bathroom, a living-dining room, a kitchen with a pantry, a laundry and a small walled yard that actually keeps the wind off. Brick with an insulated cavity, double glazing, a gas central heating system, a wood stove in the living room, and a garage. Two hundred and fifty metres to the waterfront path.

Santa Cruz is empty in a way that is hard to convey: the province is the size of Britain with under three hundred thousand people. What that buys you is silence, dark skies with the Magellanic Clouds overhead, and wildlife on the doorstep — the boat trip to Banco Cormoran runs from the town pier and takes forty minutes to reach penguins, and Commerson's dolphins regularly escort the boat.

The town works: a hospital, schools, banks, supermarkets, hardware stores, hotels and restaurants doing Patagonian lamb, king crab and hake. It sits on Route 3, the main north-south artery, with a small airport and regular buses. Rio Gallegos is three and a half hours south with flights to Buenos Aires and connections to El Calafate and the glaciers.

Nobody buys here for beach weather. Summer is fifteen to twenty degrees and windy, winter hovers near freezing, and the sea is for wildlife and fishing rather than swimming. What you buy is a solid, warm, cheap house on one of the most historic bays in the Americas, at the far end of the coastline this catalogue covers. Argentine conveyancing applies: an escribano checks and registers title, deals are in cash dollars, and foreigners buy freely. It is the last stop before the Strait of Magellan.