We did not enter. On day 42, we ran out of fuel for our single camp stove. The satellite phone had been dead for weeks. We had built a signal fire on the highest point of the island—a ridge we named Mirador de la Agonía —using every piece of driftwood and non-essential gear.
We were rescued by a poacher.
Do not sleep in the nave. The bell rings spontaneously. Elías, a superstitious man, refused to enter the church after the first night. He slept in a cave by the beach. I don't blame him. 2. Water: The Devil’s Tears Freshwater is scarce. There is one spring, located halfway up the volcano’s caldera, trickling out of a fissure the Spanish called La Fuente Amarga (The Bitter Source). The water is high in sulfur and tastes like licking a battery, but it won’t kill you. To collect it, you must climb a 200-foot scree slope that shifts under your weight. Petra fell twice. On the third attempt, we lashed ourselves together using rope from the ship’s wreckage. 3. Food: The Penguin Compromise Greater Astarta has a colony of 10,000 Southern Rockhopper penguins. They are adorable, loud, and—if you are starving—technically edible. We survived for three weeks on a diet of limpets (tiny shellfish clinging to the volcanic rocks), wild celery (which grows in the island's marshy center), and one unfortunate cormorant that flew into our stone-throwing range. stranded on santa astarta
Geologically, Santa Astarta is a shield volcano remnant, consisting of one main island (Greater Astarta, roughly 11 miles long) and a series of razor-sharp sea stacks called Los Dientes del Diablo (The Devil’s Teeth). The island is covered in a dense, prehistoric-looking forest of subantarctic flora: leatherleaf, dwarf beech, and a carnivorous sundew that locals (before the place was abandoned) called Lágrimas de la Virgen . We did not enter
Geologists would later theorize that Santa Astarta sits on a network of hollow lava tubes that act as a resonance chamber for deep-ocean infrasound. Elías had a different theory: “The tunnels under the church are not for storage. They are for escape. Something lives down there.” We had built a signal fire on the
On day twelve, we found the entrance to those tunnels. It was behind the church’s altar, a four-foot wide shaft descending into absolute blackness. We dropped a stone. We counted seconds. We never heard it hit bottom.