Caleta Tortel has no streets. The village hangs off the rocky shore of a fjord in southern Chilean Patagonia, and everything, from the church to the post office to the family houses, is joined by boardwalks and stairways of cypress timber that rise and fall with the slope. Wheels are left at the top, and so are motorbikes, because the whole place is a footpath. The wood is the local ciprés de las Guaitecas, which resists rot in the constant rain, and the walkways give off a damp, resinous smell that you notice as soon as you step off the road.
The setting is wild. The Baker river, the largest in Chile by volume, pours out of the Patagonian ice fields to the east and meets the sea here in a wide delta, in a milky blue-green colour from glacial silt. Islands and channels lie to the west, and cloud sits on the forested hills for days at a time. The ice fields themselves, huge remnants of the last ice age, are a short boat trip away. Rain falls on most days of the year, so a good set of waterproofs is more important than the choice of tyres.
Getting here is part of the story. The Carretera Austral, the gravel highway built through the region in the late twentieth century, leaves its main line near Cochrane, and a branch road of some twenty kilometres drops down to the village, ending at a car park above the settlement. The surface is gravel, sometimes loose, and the way is narrow and winding, with sharp bends and drops. After rain, take it slowly and watch for trucks. The summer months from December to March are the most comfortable and the roads are best.
Small guesthouses and a few places to eat serve fish, bread and strong tea, and you should book ahead in the high season. Leave time to walk to the end of the boardwalks, then sit, listen to the water, and consider the way a community has been built without a single street.