The Juan Fernandez Islands

The Juan Fernández Islands first caught my attention thanks to a documentary so wildly inaccurate that it should have come with a warning label. The history was nonsense, the claims were absurd, yet the imagery was stunning. Those rugged cliffs rising from the Pacific, the wind carved ridges, and the lonely bays felt like a place where the world still keeps its secrets. It was the kind of landscape that stays with you long after the credits roll.

In this episode we look past the fiction and into the real story of these islands. We explore how a frustrated navigator discovered them, how pirates and castaways turned them into a refuge, how Alexander Selkirk survived four years alone, and how war and disaster kept shaping the community that lives there today. The truth is better than anything a bad documentary could dream up, and it is well worth the journey.