🇨🇱 Chile · Easter Island and Pacific islands
The Juan Fernández Islands are a group of volcanic islands in the Pacific Ocean, some 670 kilometers off the coast of mainland Chile, opposite the Valparaíso Region. The archipelago is a national park and a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, celebrated for its extraordinary endemic biodiversity — with plant and bird species found nowhere else on Earth — and for its link to the story of Robinson Crusoe.
The main and only permanently inhabited island is Robinson Crusoe, home to the village of San Juan Bautista, beside Cumberland Bay. The archipelago is completed by Santa Clara island and the distant Alejandro Selkirk island. The name 'Robinson Crusoe' pays tribute to Daniel Defoe's famous novel, inspired by the real story of the sailor Alexander Selkirk, who survived as a castaway on these islands in the early 18th century.
Juan Fernández is a destination for lovers of nature, diving, hiking and history: endemic forests, the Juan Fernández fur seal, crystalline water with unique marine life, and historic traces such as forts and caves. Getting there takes planning — small aircraft and a sea crossing, both at the mercy of the weather — but it rewards you with one of the most singular and pristine corners of Chile. This guide covers what to see, how to get there and what to bear in mind.
The Juan Fernández archipelago was discovered in 1574 by the Spanish navigator Juan Fernández, from whom it takes its name. For centuries it was a refuge for sailors, pirates and privateers, and the setting for the true story that inspired 'Robinson Crusoe': the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk lived as a castaway on the largest island between 1704 and 1709. Later it was a penal colony and, in 1915, the scene of the scuttling of the German cruiser Dresden in Cumberland Bay during the First World War. In 1935 it was declared a national park, and it has been a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since 1977. In 1966 the Chilean state officially renamed the largest island Robinson Crusoe and the distant 'Más Afuera' Alejandro Selkirk. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Chile's great port and its coastal playground: the hills and funiculars of Valparaíso, a World Heritage Site; Viña del Mar, the 'Garden City'; Neruda's houses; the vineyards of Casablanca; and the remote islands of Juan Fernández and Rapa Nui.
Read the history of Valparaíso Region →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The Juan Fernández archipelago was discovered in 1574 by the Spanish navigator and pilot Juan Fernández, who put in at these volcanic islands lost in the Pacific, some 670 kilometers off the Chilean coast. The islands took his name and, over the following centuries, became a landmark and a port of call for ships crossing the South Pacific, thanks to their fresh water, their timber and their abundant marine life.
Permanently uninhabited for a long time, the islands became a refuge and a hideout for pirates, privateers and buccaneers preying on the Spanish Pacific coast. For many sailors, Juan Fernández was a place to rest, resupply and lie low. That strategic role later led the Spanish Crown to fortify the archipelago, building defenses such as Fuerte Santa Bárbara to protect the islands from attack and from rival powers.
The archipelago's wildlife suffered from those visits: the Juan Fernández fur seal, endemic to the islands, was hunted intensively for its pelt and its fat, and came close to extinction. The introduction of foreign species by sailors also disrupted the fragile island ecosystem. The early history of Juan Fernández was thus shaped by seafaring, piracy and the exploitation of its resources.
The most celebrated episode in the history of Juan Fernández is the one that inspired one of the most universal literary myths. In the early 18th century the Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, after a dispute with his captain over the poor state of their ship, asked to be left on the archipelago's largest island, then uninhabited. He remained alone there between 1704 and 1709 — more than four years — surviving on hunted goats, fishing, wild fruit and his own ingenuity, until a passing ship finally rescued him.
Selkirk's story spread across Europe and reached the English writer Daniel Defoe, who took it as the inspiration for his novel 'Robinson Crusoe', published in 1719 and destined to become a classic of world literature. Although Defoe set his tale in the Caribbean and added a great deal of fiction, the core of the solitary castaway surviving on a remote island comes from the real experience lived on Juan Fernández.
In recognition of that link, and with an eye on boosting tourism, the Chilean state officially renamed the archipelago's main island 'Isla Robinson Crusoe' in 1966, and the more distant one, previously called 'Más Afuera', 'Isla Alejandro Selkirk'. Today the myth permeates the islands' whole tourist identity, and places such as the Selkirk Lookout — from which the castaway is said to have scanned the horizon — are part of every visitor's itinerary.
Across its history, Juan Fernández served Chile in various ways. During the colonial and republican periods the islands were used as a place of confinement and imprisonment: among others, founding figures of Chilean independence were exiled to its caves and redoubts, an episode recalled by the so-called Cuevas de los Patriotas on Cumberland Bay. The isolation that made the archipelago a refuge also made it a perfect natural prison.
One of the most remembered episodes came in 1915, during the First World War: the German cruiser SMS Dresden, pursued by the British navy after the naval battle of the Falkland Islands, took shelter in Cumberland Bay off Robinson Crusoe. Cornered by British warships in neutral Chilean waters, the German commander ordered his own ship scuttled to avoid capture. The Dresden's remains lie in the bay and form part of the island's historical memory — and of its appeal for divers.
In 1935, recognizing the exceptional value of its nature, Chile declared the archipelago a national park, and UNESCO later designated it a Biosphere Reserve. These designations aim to protect its astonishing endemic biodiversity, threatened by introduced species and human activity. Today Juan Fernández combines its rich history of sailors, castaways, prisoners and battles with its role as a natural sanctuary, a unique corner in the middle of the Chilean Pacific.
Beyond its human history, Juan Fernández is famous for being one of the most endemic-rich places on the planet relative to its size, a genuine natural laboratory of evolution. Its volcanic origin — the islands rose from the ocean with no connection to the continent — and its extreme isolation allowed the few species that managed to colonize them (carried by wind, currents or birds) to evolve in unique ways, producing plants and animals found nowhere else in the world.
Its flora includes giant tree ferns, the chonta palm, the luma and dozens of endemic species; many are now critically endangered. In the fauna, the emblem is the Juan Fernández fur seal, hunted en masse between the 18th and 19th centuries until it was presumed extinct, and rediscovered in the 1960s in small colonies that have since recovered remarkably. The Juan Fernández firecrown, an endemic hummingbird at serious risk, is another standout.
The main threat to this natural heritage has been species introduced by humans — goats, rabbits, rats, blackberry and other invasive plants — which displace the natives and degrade the endemic forest. That is why the designation as a national park (1935) and as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve (1977) seeks to protect and restore these fragile ecosystems, a task in which CONAF, scientists and the island community itself all take part.
Today the archipelago has a small permanent population of a little over nine hundred people, almost all of them in the village of San Juan Bautista on Robinson Crusoe island. Community life revolves around fishing for the Juan Fernández lobster, a very high-value product exported to demanding markets and the backbone of the local economy, supplemented by nature tourism and public services.
On 27 February 2010, the great earthquake that shook south-central Chile generated a tsunami that struck Cumberland Bay hard before dawn. The waves swept much of the low-lying part of San Juan Bautista, destroying homes, boats and infrastructure and killing people in the small community. The tragedy, which caught the islanders without an adequate warning system, left a deep mark on the village's memory.
In the years that followed, San Juan Bautista was rebuilt with greater safety against future tsunamis in mind, reorganizing the coastal strip and reinforcing warning and evacuation systems. The community, resilient and proud of its island identity, keeps the memory of that episode alive while continuing to care for its sea, its lobster and its unique natural heritage, in one of the most remote and singular corners of Chile.