Nested between Cerro Benítez and Sierra Señoret, Laguna Sofia lies serene, peaceful along its eight kilometres length, protectively embraced by the surrounding geography.
Until 1898, it was named and mapped as Laguna de la Cueva, suggesting it has been an ancient place for shelter. Condors seem to agree as they nest in the holes of its vertical rock walls, and so do Paleoindian ancestors, who left their footprints as paintings on the same rock walls. Finally, colonists ran into this protected, paradisiac landscape within the extreme surrounding geography, and named it Laguna Sofia.
The protected morphology of this landscape makes it an inhabitable one. Today it is explorable too, during sunny days inhabitants from Puerto Natales come to refresh and relax finding a corner where every side of recent history reconciles.
Georeading
The strong conglomerate stands out, crowning the hills among fine grained sandstone and mudstone. Conglomerates are robust and rough, they are made of small, perfectly rounded, and polished rocks, surrounded by fine grains of sand.
The little boulders of rocks are a smaller scale representation of the Cordillera of a hundred million years ago: small bits of lava, granite, and metamorphic rocks that tell a story of the lively, ancient Andes. Back then, mountains were growing creating a new weight that bended the surface beneath them, deepening the basin besides them until up to 2000 metres deep.
These conglomerates are what back then was a main artery of high velocity flow, rocks coming down from mountain peaks to the bottom of the basin and into the ocean floor.
These rocks are the fossil of massive landslides, rapid and uncontainable due to the intensity of mountain building. Paleoindian people and pioneers alike found this peaceful, protected spot, just like the rocks from 100 million years ago did.