485 years later.
At dawn on the 12th of February 2006, we will be initiating the third edition of PATAGONIA EXPEDITION RACE . On this day, the racers will find themselves in a historic landscape, with views of the southern Atlantic Ocean as well as of the eastern entrance of Magellan Strait. The first section of the race will be following the same route that Ferdinand Magellan took, through the strait that today takes his name.

The route of PATAGONIA EXPEDITION RACE 2006 will take us travelling through more than 700 kilometres of the vast landscape of southern Patagonia, from the southern Atlantic Ocean to the channels that penetrate the South American continent from the Pacific, and then will have us continuing towards the south, and then even further southward... We will cross broad and expansive steppe plains, mountains covered with glaciers, pristine islands, labyrinths of canals, icy rivers, extensive peat bogs, deep ravines, and dense forest. In this landscape, isolated from the rest of the world and uninhabited by humankind, every day we will be amazed by the landscape and by the wildlife: penguins, ñandu (or southern rhea, an ostrich-like bird), the rare endemic deer called huemúl, guanacos (wild relatives of the llama), foxes, sea lions, and possibly even whales and other wild animals. It will be a long and hard expedition, in some of the most isolated and pristine parts of southern Patagonia... it will be a grand adventure, in the style that is both unique to and characteristic of PATAGONIA EXPEDITION RACE.

Assistance to the teams will be minimal, and will be undertaken by the race organization. The details of the route, and the exact location of the starting point, will remain secret until one day before the starting date of the race. The centre of operations will be in the city of Punta Arenas, Chile.