Río Seco Museum

From the first moment they told me about the Río Seco Natural History Museum, the curiosity to visit it lingered in my thoughts. I vaguely knew what they were doing, I saw photos of a specialized group of museum workers attending a whale stranding in the Strait of Magellan, but I never imagined how impressed I would be by the accumulated work and the interest of this project. The physical location of the museum speaks for itself. An old refrigerator built by the South American Export Syndicate Ltda last century. A small inscription at the museum entrance confirms this. An architectural complex consisting of three large warehouses and several surrounding houses.

"I was speechless! I had never been in a place like this. It was like a room from a 19th century naturalist. On the shelves, you could see jars with formalin and strange creatures inside them, as well as dozens of skeletons of almost all the animals in the region."

From the moment I crossed the museum entrance portal, my friend Aymara Zegers and Miguel Cáceres (museum workers) began to show me the work they were doing. We quickly headed to the first warehouse where I could smell a strong odor of decomposition. Upon entering, I found large whale vertebrae and bones scattered everywhere inside, the result of a large cetacean stranded in Tierra del Fuego. The place was far from looking like a "museum" but I found it really interesting to be able to visualize the process of reconstructing the skeleton and to count each vertebra of this large animal (54).

Next, they led me to an adjacent house that served as a workshop for the "assembly" of different types of animal skeletons. I was speechless! I had never been in a place like this. It was like a room from a 19th century naturalist. On the shelves, you could see jars with formalin and strange creatures inside them, as well as dozens of skeletons of almost all the animals in the region, kestrels (Falco tinnunculus), flamingos (Phoenicopterus chilensis), Magellanic penguins (Spheniscus magellanicus), beavers (Castor canadensis), among many others. I could have spent hours in that place.

The third room we visited was the most "museum-like" of the entire tour. Perfectly set up and decorated with a large number of animal skeletons of all kinds, it demonstrates the meticulous work being carried out in this museum, which without major pretensions or large state funding, has been able to build a very complete exhibition of much of the local fauna of the Magallanes region. Without a doubt, this place has become a must-visit for anyone living in the region or passing through as a tourist. It is a clear and didactic way to understand the environment that surrounds us and the urgent protection that the places where these creatures live, reproduce, and die require.

How to get to the Río Seco Museum?

The Río Seco Museum is located towards the north exit of Punta Arenas (in the direction of the airport). From the road itself, you can see several signs indicating this area. The museum is located on the waterfront facing the strait.

Important Information

For now, this museum functions more as a workshop in progress, its workers are almost always in the field collecting animals or working on installations. This leaves them little time to have fixed visiting hours. Therefore, each visit must be requested through the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/mhnrioseco) or the personal cell phone of one of the workers (Aymara Zegers +569 51003791). There is no entrance fee to the museum, but a voluntary contribution is recommended to help finance, in part, the work that this place carries out.