Gutsy Gated Community: The Icy Village Where You Must Remove Your Appendix

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There’s a settlement in Antarctica with a school, a post office and a huddle of homes. It’s like other sub-zero villages, except for one thing: families must have surgery to move in.

Villa Las Estrellas’ lights glow in the perpetual Antarctic night. Chilean authorities have essentially added “appendectomy” to the official to-do list for anyone moving to this tiny village – you must lose your appendix before getting residency. 

Villa Las Estrellas, on King George Island, is one of just two small civilian settlements on Antarctica. 

In summer about 150 people live there (roughly 80 in winter), most of them scientists or air force personnel with families tagging along. 

Somehow this isolated outpost boasts a full post office, school, bank, a library, radio station – and even a modest sports center with a sauna. Residents joke that the final step in their move-in process is a meeting with the surgeon instead of an interior designer.

Village Amenities: Post Office, School, Bank (and Sauna)

Villa Las Estrellas reads like a brochure for the most self-sufficient micro-town on Earth. It has:

  • A post office: the Chilean Correos de Chile branch that still stamps mail with a genuine Antarctic postmark (a draw for philatelists).

  • A bank: a branch of Banco de Crédito e Inversiones with one banker on staff (one might say it’s the most exclusive “banker’s house” on the continent).

  • A tiny school: grades 1–8 taught by just two teachers (local kids probably ace geography, since they can see Argentina and even Antarctica’s other countries from their classroom window).

  • A sports center: complete with basketball court, ping-pong tables and exercise equipment – plus a sauna (the only place where thawing out after work is part of the daily routine).

  • A hospital: one doctor, one nurse, an X-ray machine and two beds (essentially everything you need to stay alive – provided your appendix has been preemptively removed!).

It even has a Catholic chapel (St. Mary Queen of Peace) for weekend mass. In short, Villa Las Estrellas has almost everything you’d expect in a small village – except a taxi or bakery (and, of course, an appendix).

No Appendix, No Entry: The Price of Residency

Odd as it sounds, this appendectomy requirement is not a drill. 

Since the nearest full hospital is roughly 600–625 miles away, any serious case of appendicitis in Antarctica would be a life-or-death emergency. So, Chilean officials decided to eliminate the problem altogether by making appendix-removal a term of residency. 

As of 2018, every resident (even children) must have had their appendix taken out before arrival. 

Think of it as the ultimate medical Homeowners’ Association fee. One former outpost doctor dryly told the BBC that “removing the appendix eliminates the risk” of a fatal rupture when the doctor is six hundred miles (and a stormy ocean) away. 

In practical terms, if you can’t trust a polar clinic to handle it, you cross it off your body parts list in advance.

Most relocation checklists involve duct tape and furniture. Here, it’s surgery. 

On the upside, this rule at least means the town’s doctors no longer have to worry about emergency surgeries that they aren’t equipped to perform. 

On the downside, prospective residents have joked that the only way to get past Customs and Immigration is with a very specific medical history. 

No appendix? Then “welcome to the stars” – literally, for Las Estrellas (“Village of the Stars”) – but you better be prepared to live without a certain side organ.

Only the Chill Need Apply: True Grit for Polar Life

Appendix or not, living in Villa Las Estrellas demands a serious commitment to chill – in every sense. 

The climate is merciless: mean annual temperature hovers around 27.8°F (−2.3°C). Winters bring days with almost no sun, summers bring barely any night, and storms can bury the town under snow for weeks. 

Fresh produce is a luxury (residents joke that carrots are an exotic condiment), and even pets are restricted – dogs are banned by treaty to protect wildlife. 


In short, you have to love the cold, the isolation, and well-organized bureaucracy.

But for those who do, Villa Las Estrellas offers a surreal perk: no traffic lights, free ice for your drinks, and penguins as neighbors (Emperors and Gentoo penguins sometimes waddle right past the schoolyard). 

Touring cruise ships stop by, eager for the novelty of Antarctica’s “most extreme gated community.” 

Inside, there’s satellite TV, internet on school computers, even a local radio station to blast carolers’ hymns during the endless night. 

Residents say it’s like a quirky village trapped in a snow globe – and you have to be truly chill (and a little gutsy) to live in it.

Villa Las Estrellas isn’t for everyone, but those who bite the bullet (or appendix) get a unique bragging right: they live in one of the coldest, strangest little towns on Earth. 

In a place where a welcome letter comes with a medical waiver, the ultimate commitment to “chill living” is definitely literal, and definitely on the house.

 

Please support my writing by donating $1 at https://ko-fi.com/wilchard1102

 

#VillaLasEstrellas
#Antarctica
#ExtremeLiving
#ChillLife
#Appendectomy
#NoAppendixNoEntry
#PolarAdventure
#QuirkyTravel
#ChileanAntarctica
#OnlyInAntarctica
#GutsyMove
#PolarVillage
#FrozenLife
#TravelWeird
#OddResidency 

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