Taitao Peninsula

[1] Spanish explorers and Jesuits that sailed south from Chiloé Archipelago in the 17th and 18th centuries regularly avoided rounding Taitao Peninsula entering instead the Gulf of Penas after a brief land crossing at the isthmus of Ofqui.

[3][2] Some of the survivors, including John Byron, were led into the Spanish settlements of the Chiloé Archipelago by the Chono chieftain Martín Olleta via Presidente Ríos Lake.

[2] Writer Benjamín Subercaseaux visited the Taitao Peninsula in 1946, reportedly having seen footprints and fresh human feces he thought indicated the indigenous Chono people, as known from the historical record, still lived in the region.

[6] To the east, near San Rafael Lake, a N. betuloides forest with an understory of Desfontainia fulgens, Blechnum magellanicum, Fuchsia magellanica and Raukaua laetevirens grows.

[5] As the Chile Rise has subducted beneath the South American Plate at the Taitao Peninsula, three ridge–continent collisions have occurred over the last 5 million years ago, approximately.