Crusoe’s Pacific island paradise

The Juan Fernández Islands inspired Daniel Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe, after he heard how a Scottish sailor, Alexander Selkirk, was marooned there for four years from 1704. But still more remarkable than this literary claim to fame is the archipelago’s natural history, says Simon Willis in The Economist’s 1843 magazine. Situated 435 miles off the coast of Chile, these “majestic” but little-known Pacific outposts were formed by a volcanic eruption four million years ago. Many of the species that subsequently colonised them have since died out elsewhere, and the islands now have one of the richest concentrations of unique endemic wildlife on Earth. Getting to them is tricky: boats go just twice a month, and flights there are in a tiny twin-prop plane for which tickets cost $800 return. As a result, this “living museum” attracts only about 2,500 tourists a year.

The islands can only be explored on foot, and just two are inhabited, with a total population of 900. Originally called Más a Tierra, the largest was renamed Robinson Crusoe in the 1960s. Formed by “giant drips and globules” of lava, its jagged peaks and sea cliffs are cloaked in lush subtropical forests. Above the village of San Juan Bautista, there’s a notch in the rocks where the stranded Selkirk used to watch for ships. And further on, hummingbirds dart about in the valley of Villagra, which has a positively “Jurassic air”, with great banks of plants known as “Robinson’s umbrellas” for their thick, meter-wide leaves. Dehouche (0871-284 7770, www.dehouche.com) has an eight-night trip to Chile from £1,964pp, excluding international flights.