The Remarkable Story of Estancia Cristina
Estancia Cristina is not easy to get to, and it never has been. But the most remarkable places on earth are generally not easy to reach.
Estancia Cristina, with Lago Argentino and Cerro Carnero in the background, a fantastic four hour round trip hike from the estancia to the summit and back.
Situated right in the middle of over 3,000 square miles of rugged Patagonian wilderness, there are no roads that reach Estancia Cristina. The only way to get to it is by boat—a 30-mile journey across the azure waters of Lago Argentino, filled with massive icebergs calving off of dozens of glaciers that spill into the lake. The fierce Patagonian winds rip off the southern Patagonian icecap, accelerate downward through gaps in the jagged granite peaks, and explode onto the lake’s surface, whipping it into a cauldron of rolling swell and whitecaps on most days.
As you complete this journey and land on the broad, rocky beach at the head of the Caterina Valley, the deafening roar of silence and isolation overwhelms you. Taking a look around at the peaks, glaciers, and forests, you realize you made it to one of the most spectacular and secluded places on earth. You know you are one of the lucky few humans on the planet that get to experience this.
Present-day visitors to Estancia Cristina make this journey daily–no problem, in comfort–aboard modern vessels designed specifically for the lake conditions. The boats are decked out with radar, satellite GPS navigation, backup propulsion systems, dry heated cabins, comfy chairs to lounge on while soaking up the scenery passing by hermetically sealed windows, warm pastries, and coffee on offer. Just in case, life rafts in their white capsules are lashed into cradles and the captains’ VHF radio is perpetually tuned into channel 16, which on the other end is backed by the full resources and skill of the Argentine Navy and Coast Guard.
This journey is made only between October through April every year now; the height of the splendid Austral summertime when the Estancia is open to visitors. Once they arrive, guests drive in modern 4x4’s into the mountains to viewpoints overlooking the Upsala Glacier, hike, and horseback ride through mind-boggling scenery accompanied by jovial guides who know the land like the back of their hands and serve them elaborate picnic lunches. Back in the main lodge, they dine on fine Argentina steak, organic green salads, and wash it down with rich Malbec in front of roaring fires while flipping through coffee table books late into the night. They retire to their rooms and snuggle under goose-down comforters in their heated rooms listening to the wind roar outside. In the morning, they wake up to splendid sunrises over Cerro Norte before a hot shower. Another day of guided adventures punctuated with unfettered relaxation awaits.
The original sheep shearing barn at Estancia Cristina, now turned into a museum.
The rest of the year, the Estancia is closed down—shuttered, in fact. The extreme winter weather and limited daylight hours leave our imagination to wonder what it must be like on the other side of the lake during the heart of winter.
But just what would it have been like in 1913 for English immigrants, Joseph and Jessie Masters and their 11-year-old son Herbert and 9-year-old daughter Cristina, when they first made this 30-mile journey across the lake by rudimentary steamship? To land in this never-before-seen wilderness, be dropped off and left to create a working Estancia from scratch—a place they would spend the next 80-plus years building out a life and legacy?
This is the thing that is most powerful about a visit to Estancia Cristina—an intrigue and fascination that gets into your soul and psyche—a feeling you are never able to shake. Talk to anyone who has been out to Estancia Cristina, whether as a day visitor or as an overnight guest, and the conversation always contains two parts: 1) “Wow, what an incredible place…” and 2) “Can you even imagine what it was like for that family who founded it?”
Imagining what life would have been like for the Masters family at Estancia Cristina has a light and a dark side. You envision how pure and beautiful life must have been, cut off from the problems of civilization and surrounded by nature's majesty, watching the slow roll of seasonal progress. From amazing sunsets to rainbows, bursts of wildflowers in springtime, thick runs of salmon cascading up the river in summer where you must have been able to just reach out and grab one by the tail for dinner. But you can also imagine how hard life must have been. Back-breaking work, terrifying storms, dark, cold winters, and frightening encounters with pumas. The isolation from society and yearning for human contact at times must have been utterly suffocating and depressing.
Clark, atop Cerro Carnero, with a full view of the Cristina Valley behind. One of the most amazing hikes in the National Park, only accessible to overnight guests of the Estancia.
There are no shortage of luxury lodges built within the last decade or so around the national parks of Argentine and Chilean Patagonia. Places with incredible food, lodging and excursions, ideally situated to get guests out to those postcard-perfect photo opportunities to be able to say “I was there, too!” And travelers have responded en masse. The closest town and airport to Estancia Cristina, El Calafate, receives over half a million visitors every year, offers 8,000 hotel beds, and is a well-oiled logistical machine in getting those 500,000 people out to the Perito Moreno Glacier on day trips to see the ice and lake before flying on to their next destination.
But Estancia Cristina has something more to offer. The historical aspect of the Estancia and the Masters family is unparalleled and utterly unique when it comes to lodging options for modern day travelers to Patagonia. It’s the type of thing you just can’t create, no matter how much financial capital you have behind you.
Exploring the vast Estancia on horseback with the resident Gauchos.
Luckily, the current team that runs Estancia Cristina has done a great job in preserving the history of the Estancia and the Masters family and presenting it to modern-day visitors. The original sheep-shearing barn contains a delightful museum covering the chronological history of the Estancia and displays a wealth of original artifacts and displays. The Estancia staff are all well-versed on the history and take guests on docent-led tours through the museum, but for those seeking a comprehensive history, here is the history of the Masters and their remarkable story.
The Masters Family from L to R: Joseph Masters (1876-1977), Jessie Masters (1876-1971), Herbert Masters 1902-1982 and Cristina Masters (1904-1924)
Upon the family’s arrival in the valley in 1913, besides the gargantuan Upsala Glacier (the largest glacier spilling off the Patagonian icecap), there were no buildings or infrastructure in the area. The family pitched a tent beside the lake and got to work with the few tools they had and a few head of cattle and sheep they had brought with them.
Over the years, they built up a lovely Estancia, all by hand, and their livestock operation grew in leaps and bounds. They officially founded the Estancia in 1914 and ended up having 27,000 sheep, 50 horses and a healthy stock of cattle for milking and breeding prime beef. In total, their Estancia covered close to 50,000 acres. Their initial small house of stacked stone and adobe still stands next to the guest common areas, and the grove of small willow trees they planted as a wind block around the buildings are now close to 100 feet high and still shelter guests from the constant Patagonian winds.
The viewpoint of the Upsala Glacier and the Southern Patagonia icecap from Estancia Cristina. Many scientific and military operations utilized the Estancia as a staging area for research and training on the ice.
Back then, their only connection with the outside world was an old steamboat they owned, brought from Buenos Aires in 1915 and rebuilt on site by Joseph Masters. Christened the “Cesar,” she was 40 feet in length and had a 10-horsepower steam-powered engine that could make the trip from Estancia Cristina to Puerto Bandera in seven to eight hours, weather permitting. The collective hard work of the family paid off. Their success allowed them to import and furnish their home with lovely items, serve spirits out of cut-glass decanters and beer out of metal-lidded ceramic German steins, and adorn their living area with leather-trimmed vanity cases and hat boxes from Paris. These period details still decorate the Estancia today, and have not lost any of their charm over the years.
Modern cozy guest cottages for present day visitors to the Estancia.
In the early 1920’s, just when Joseph and Jessie Masters must have felt that they had finally established a safe haven in the wilderness for their family…tragedy struck. Their beloved only daughter, Cristina, became seriously ill. With prolonged heavy weather that didn’t allow them to depart for help across the lake aboard the “Cesar,” Cristina’s conditions worsened. Cristina died of pneumonia in 1924, at age 20. Parents Joseph and Jessie and their surviving son, Herbert, decided to rename the Estancia in her memory on the day she was buried. So, since 1924, the Estancia has been called Estancia Cristina.
*It’s interesting to note that there was not a medical doctor in El Calafate, a full day of travel away from the Estancia, until 1935. This puts into perspective just how self-sufficient the family had to be in situations such as the health of their children.
Arriving to Estancia Cristina by boat. Cerro Norte in the background dwarfs the Estancia below. What were the Masters’ family feeling arriving here for the first time in 1913?
Los Glaciares National Park was created in 1937 and Estancia Cristina sat right in the middle of it. The Masters family, through many legal battles, were allowed to stay and continue their sheep operations. The Park Service granted them a temporary permit for occupation and grazing land, but stipulated that these rights would be “non-transferrable after the death of the original settling family”. This must have been a painful reality for the family in light of the death of Cristina, all responsibility for the continuation of the Masters' family bloodline and legacy fell to the remaining son, Herbert.
The mourning family continued to toil away at their sheep operation and the exportation of wool which was quite lucrative through the 1930’s and into the 1950’s with World War II increasing demand for all types of materials. Two major things, detailed below, happened during this time period which are documented beautifully in the museum at Estancia Cristina.
One of Herbert’s shortwave radio models from the 1970’s and a collection of “QSL Cards” sent to him from around the world - A QSL card is a written confirmation of a two-way radiocommunication between two amateur radio stations, usually sent by post after contact was made to commemorate the occasion.
The first is Herbert Masters’ intense interest in shortwave radio. There are notes in archives that the Masters family installed a shortwave radio sometime in the 1930’s. They had no electricity back then, and still don’t, due to the Estancias isolation. (Today everything is run off of a diesel generator or solar power.) But the radio sets back in the 1930’s were coming out of rural America, an area which also was not “on the grid” until after WWII. These radio sets were powered by a “wincharger,” which like the name implies, provides it’s six watts of power from a wind turbine, of which there was no shortage in Patagonia. Shortwave or HAM radio were something that the younger Masters’ son, Herbert, poured his energy into. He became one of the most skilled HAM radio operators worldwide and was a certified member of the American Radio Relay Society. The historical display of Herbert’s radio operations at the Estancia today is fascinating. The wall is covered with “QSL” postcards sent from the farthest reaches of the world, certifying the date and time in which Herbert established radio contact with that particular station. Remote villages in Alaska, Kenya, India and from the metropolises of Tokyo, Moscow, Sydney—each of which would have also received, eventually, by mail, a beautiful reciprocal blue postcard with the station number of Estancia Cristina signed by Herbert. Experiencing this display, you have to conjure images of Herbert, alone, on a dark night with the wind howling outside and a sky spilling over with stars, hunched over his radio set listening intently through headphones to faint emissions from strangers on the other side of the planet. Imagine the thoughts that must have gone through Herbert’s mind to talk to someone in the outback of Australia, to envision just how different their surroundings must have been from those of where Herbert sat, surrounded by glaciers, granite peaks, and the ever-present Patagonian wind. We take global connectivity for granted today, and this display really drives that point home.
The second fantastic display which brings to light just how difficult it must have been to complete some tasks in this isolation, as well as the extreme self-sufficiency and ingenuity the Masters family possessed, is the display chronicling the family’s building of the steamship “Cristinita” or “little Cristina.” The “Cesar” which had navigated the lake for over 40 years and initially brought the family to Estancia Cristina and served as their personal and financial connection with the outside world, was on her last legs and they needed a new boat. Rather than buying one they decided to build their own from blueprint plans they found in a 1948 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine! The greasy tattered copy of the magazine, creased open to the schematic diagrams, sits in a display case in the museum and is almost vertigo-inducing to fathom how you would start such an undertaking, even today. For the Masters family, a local hardware store was never an option. Anything they had done at the Estancia, they just figured out how to do it themselves. So they fell, cut, milled and shaped all the wood on site, machined iron nails and hardware from a coal-fired forge, and got the vessel together. There is no exact record of when they started, but it is assumed they began in the early 1950’s. The very famous British explorer, Eric Shipton, who visited the Estancia during one of his climbing expeditions in 1958 noted in his journal that “the ship was almost ready but the family is waiting on the diesel engine to arrive, which they mail ordered from Detroit in the United States.” It is believed that the engine took over four years to arrive to the Estancia from Detroit, and was installed around 1962-63. The “Cristinita” served the family well and cut the travel time to Puerto Bandera down to four hours. The boat was sadly shipwrecked in the early 1990’s right on the beach in front of the Estancia, where it still sits today for visitors to admire. The long-awaited Detroit diesel engine resides in the museum along with the original shipping manifests, invoices, and blueprints. It’s a remarkable thing to see in person.
The steamship “Cristinita” sits abandoned on the shores of Lago Argentina in front of the Estancia since the early 1990s. Built by hand by Masters family between 1950-1962, the diesel engine and construction plans are displayed in the museum.
The Masters family seemed to keep to themselves for much of the history of living there, although there are mentions of a few ranch hands and carpenters who must have been their closest friends. But in the 1950’s, outsiders started to come to the Estancia with greater regularity in the form of scientific and military expeditions sponsored by the government. Due to the Estancia’s incredible location next to the Upsala glacier and the southern Patagonian icecap, it was used as a staging area to build a series of shelters and scientific research stations on the icecap. Numerous army and air force operations were staged out of the Estancia, specifically used to train pilots for landing on the Antarctic continent.
Historical trinkets sit atop a dresser in one of the 20 guest rooms the Estancia offers visitors today.
As Joseph and Jessie Masters began to grow older, they knew they needed more help than just their son Herbert to keep the Estancia running. But it was extremely difficult to find someone who would be willing to live in such an isolated location, and who shared the extreme work ethic of the Masters family. However, in a stroke of serendipity in 1966, Janet Hermingston (originally from Edinburgh, Scotland) was sent to the Estancia under a medical order to be a “woman of company” to Jessie Masters, as her husband’s health was becoming fragile. Janet fell in love with the beauty and isolation of Estancia Cristina—and seemed to be the only individual who was truly taken in by the Masters family and treated as one of them. Janet cared for Joseph and Jessie while helping Herbert with daily tasks. Jessie Masters died in 1971 at 95-years-old and her husband, Joseph, died in 1977 at 101-years-old. They were buried in the Rio Gallegos cemetery alongside their beloved Cristina, but Herbert built three white crosses as a memorial and placed them in the ground outside the farmhouse, they are still there today. With their passing, only Janet and Herbert were left to run the Estancia. Having lived and worked beside each other for decades, Janet eventually married Herbert on his eightieth birthday in 1982. Obviously, this was a joint decision to ensure there was a lineage in the family when he passed away to ensure the dream wouldn’t die. Herbert passed two years later in 1984, bequeathing the entire Estancia to Janet.
One of the 20 guest rooms at the Estancia
Janet kept the dwindling sheep operation running by herself, tended a large organic garden which still feeds visitors today, and spent a lot of time “painting bad pictures,” as she put it. Janet unknowingly laid the seeds for the future of Estancia Cristina as a tourism enterprise. Her time at Estancia Cristina from 1966 until her death was the golden age of international mountain climbing expeditions and Janet seemed, unsurprisingly, to get along well with these extremely motivated and adventuresome mountaineers that frequented the Estancia. Janet was there to host Eric Shipton on the first solo crossing of the southern Patagonian icecap in the late 60’s, got to know the famous Italian climber Casimiro Ferrari whose name is stamped on first ascents all over Patagonia, and also befriended the Slovakian-born brothers Jorge and Pedro Skvarca, who had such a fondness for Janet that they looked after her during her final living days at the Estancia in 1997. Many of these mountaineers who became her friends encouraged her to start fixing up buildings at the Estancia to house guests for tourism in order to share the magic and history of the location, and to provide an alternative income to ranching. One of the most direct links to the present-day tourism operation came from Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia clothing company. Yvon stayed with Janet on his 1968 Fitzroy expedition, together with and became enamored with the place, telling many of his friends who were pioneering “adventure travel” at the time about its potential. Two of those friends were Al Read (founder of Exum Mountain Guides and Geographic Expeditions) and James Sano (ex-President of Geographic Expeditions and current vice president of Travel, Tourism, and Conservation for the World Wildlife Fund). Al and James led frequent commercial trips to Estancia Cristina in the 1980’s, staying with Janet and helping her navigate Estancia Cristina into the world of hosting paying guests which continues to this day.
With such an incredible heritage and story, it is no wonder Estancia Cristina is one of our most beloved destinations in South America. If you are a lover of wild places, fascinated by history, and seek unique and authentic travel experiences, Estancia Cristina is the perfect destination for your next adventure.
To learn more about Estancia Cristina and how to sell it, see our recorded WEBINAR. If you really enjoy this type of history, feel free to read the full historical document about Estancia Cristina, HERE.