Expeditions to the Antarctic Peninsula,
South Georgia, Cape Horn,
Falklands & Tierra Del Fuego

Patagonia

Where is Patagonia?

Slice across the southern edge of Buenos Aires
province, through the Andes all the way to the
Pacific Ocean and then go South past Puerto Montt
as far as Cape Horn and there you have it.

Patagonia, located on the southern tip of South
America, is usually assumed to extend from
latitude 39 down to latitude 55 but there is no
exact delimitation of it.

There is an Argentine portion of Patagonia,
but also a corresponding part in Chile.

Its area is approximately 900000
sq. km., which is slightly larger than that of France
and Germany together and slightly smaller than the
states of Texas and Colorado together.

This is a region that is geographically and
climatically diverse. As well as the classic dry
southern plains of Argentina, you have the Andean
highlands and Lake Districts, the moist Pacific
coast, the rocky and frigid Tierra Del Fuego. This
is diverse terrain, but still with one thing in
common,they all are shaped in one way or another
by the Andean Cordillera, the longest continuous
mountain chain on the planet.

The Andes are being formed by the Pacific Ocean
Nazca Plate pushing under the South American
plate. This seismic push and shove is accompanied
by volcanic activity. Patagonia still has many
active volcanoes and the good outdoor things that
go along with them: high mountains, hot springs,
calderas. There are even some petrified forests,
formed by volcanic ash burying large tracts of
land.

Even though Patagonia covers one third of the land
mass both Chile and Argentina, less than 5% of
their populations live there. This is good news
for those who like their outdoors wild and free.
Both countries have set some of their most special
areas aside as national parks or natural reserves.


Patagonia, Chile is the scene of the world's great adventures. Even if we know little of the place, the name itself inhabits our subconscious, whispering of an unknown finger of the earth, el fin del mundo. We picture large silent spaces, tempestuous seas, windblown solitude.

The first Europeans to lay eyes on this landscape were led by Ferdinand Magellan, who pioneered passage through the treacherous strait that now bears his name. His expedition named the mainland 'Tierra de los Patagones,' unwittingly spawning the myth of a race of Patagonian giants. To the south, they saw the horizon darkened by smoke from the natives' fires, and named the great island Tierra Del Fuego. The legend of Patagonia was set in motion.

The indigenous groups who inhabited Tierra del Fuego deserved to be legends, as these were the world's first and greatest adventurers. In arriving on Tierra del Fuego they had completed the world's furthest human migration, arriving finally at the very end of the earth, where the Andes disappeared into the sea and glaciers flowed to the water's edge.

With nowhere else to wander, they stayed and fished the coast in canoes, collected shellfish, hunted guanaco and rheas on the pampa. Photos taken at the turn of the century depict a stone age culture where extremity had crystallized: the end of the road for the most restless wanders in history.

To the east of the Andes, the Patagonian pampa is an immense desert, by some accounts among the five largest deserts in the world.

West of the Andes is another world. Here both the Central Valley and the Coast Range have sunk into the Pacific; what were once glacial valleys are now fjords, and what were once mountaintops are now islands. Hot springs lay revealed by coastal erosion, while great glaciers further fragment the landscape, necessitating maritime or air travel. Great forests cloak the Andes from the Pacific shoreline to the continental divide, bisected by surging emerald rivers carrying glacial silt to the sea and providing habitat for fearless trout and
salmon.

This immense territory is best understood as two separate regions, separated by the vast expanse of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field.

Northern Patagonia is one of the world's last great expanses of wilderness, accessed by a gravel highway known as the Carretera Austral, (Southern Highway) Chile completed in 1988. Even today, road access to the region is not complete, and travelers on the Carretera Austral must hop ferries across the mouths of the great fjords.

Here the port of Chaitén provides access to the northernmost portions of the Carretera Austral, including truly world-class rafting and flyfishing, and cruises to glaciers and island hotsprings. Further south is the city of Coihaique, capital of the Aisén province and an ideal base for flyfishing and overland trips on the southern Carretera Austral, to lago General Carrera and the Northern and Southern Ice Fields.

Southern Patagonia, known as Magallanes, is a world apart, where the broad expanses of the pampa meet with the glacially sculpted spires of the Andes. Torres del Paine National Park and World Biosphere Reserve is the most famous of the vast protected areas in Magallanes, preserving habitat for guanacos, foxes, rheas and flamingos. South of the park is Puerto Natales, terminal for southbound ferries from Puerto Montt and operations base for hiking and horseback trips, glacier cruises, and overland trips.

Punta Arenas is the capital of the Magallanes province. Facing the Straits of Magellan and Tierra Del Fuego, Punta Arenas is the principal departure point for cruises and flights to Tierra Del Fuego, to the Canal Beagle, Isla Navarino, Cape Horn and Antarctica.

http://www.visit-chile.org/patagonia/patagonia.phtml

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UNESCO MAB BIOSPHERE RESERVE DIRECTORY

TORRES DEL PAINE, CHILE

Major ecosystem type:
Mixed mountain and highland systems
Major habitats & land cover types:
Patagonian-Fuegian steppe with Festucetum gracillimi; evergreen forest with Nothofagus pumilio; alpine treeless zone; scrublands; meadows; desert and sub-desert communities
Location 50°45' to 51°20'S; 72°31'W
Area (hectares)
Total: 184,414 (7 types of zoning)
Altitude (meters above sea level) +20 to +3,050
Year designated 1978
Current principal research/monitoring activities:
Climatic monitoring in the Dickson glacier, using remote sensing technique

http://www.unesco.org/mab/br/brdir/latin-am/chi3.htm

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P E D A L I N G T H R O U G H  P A T A G O N I A

By Jim Malusa

SALINAS GRANDES, Patagonia, Argentina Nov. 24

Along the final stretch of the Rio Chubut, the valley opens wide and runs true to the Atlantic. To one side of the highway there is a pale desert of pebbles and stiff bushes shading the springtime curls of heliotropes and mustards. To the other side are alfalfa fields and the brick-and-ivy town of Gaiman.

The Welsh built Gaiman here in Argentina. They built the irrigation canals and the stern chapels. The first came in 1865, on the brig Mimosa out of Liverpool. Nobody else had ever come to Patagonia with the intention of staying put. By World War I about 3,000 Welsh had made the voyage. Then the dream faltered and the Welsh stopped coming.

That was 85 years ago, so I am very surprised when I find myself at a little Welsh wingding.

The owner of a bed and breakfast, Gwyn Williams, invites me. His instructions are simple: "Bring a knife and a cup. The Golden Rules of this asado (an Argentine BBQ) are: no talk about women, politics, football or the English. And no portable phones, either, or we would never get around to singing our hymns."

Welsh hymns. The original settlers were backed, financially and spiritually, by the Welsh nationalist Michael D. Jones. He was part of a long chain of Welsh discontents that stretched back to 1283, when the English conquered Wales. In the 1800s, the language and traditions of Wales were floundering under a wave of English immigration to the coal fields. Mr. Jones imagined a remedy. A new Wales, built at the end of the Earth.

Today there are traffic lights at the end of the Earth. The lower Chubut Valley is thoroughly inhabited by over 100,000 people. Of these, 14 men have come to the asado, which is held tonight in a small room with a large fireplace and grill. The men are named Hughes, Evans, Humphries and Jones, but many if not most are of mixed blood. They like jugs of table wine and are jolly until everyone pulls his knife from his belt at the same time and begins to sharpen them.

The meat is ready. You cut and stab with your knife - no fork required - and follow with bread and wine. It's a juicy mess, and better fare than the original settlers enjoyed. They'd been led to believe that the valley of the Chubut was rather similar to Wales, with "tall strong forests" and "luscious pastures." They found a nude flood plain littered with driftwood. They were so ill-equipped for the desert that it took them two years to discover the principle of irrigation. They'd thought the soil was bad.

They lived thinly, on prayer and stores of wheat and the guanacos that the original Tehuelche people helped them catch with the tethered stones called boleadoras. Ten years later they'd figured things out. Twenty years later they were a success story that attracted other Europeans and Argentineans. H.H. Prichard visited the colony in 1900, and he wrote in Through the Heart of Patagonia that "... a grave danger menaces it. The danger takes the form of the dark-eyed Argentine maiden, who is rather apt to 'make roast meat of the heart' of the Welsh youth."

Prichard was right. But tonight the guitar comes out and after the Argentine ballads come the Welsh hymns. Hallelujah, they cry - and the chorus responds, a bunch of half-breeds singing in Welsh. It sounds beautiful. I say to Gwyn: So Michael Jones succeeded in his Welsh dream? And Gwyn says, "For the moment. Come back in 50 years and see."

Before I leave Gaiman I visit the Welsh museum and am lucky enough to meet a great-granddaughter of the original Jones. Tegai Roberts is no spring chicken, but she gets round in a 1984 Renault that is exactly the dirty green of the Rio Chubut. She asks more questions of my bicycle ride than I ask of her. When a teen roars by in a hot rod, Tegai winces, then remarks of my journey, "I imagine it was very quiet on the way down from Esquel."

Yes, I say. Very quiet. And I remember that I'm heading for a very quiet place, too. The lowest point in South America.

It's called Salinas Grandes, and it's so far out on the Peninsula Valdes that it's nearly in the Atlantic Ocean. The peninsula is connected to the rest of Patagonia by a neck of sheep land, an isthmus so narrow that I can see the Atlantic to either side. The road is narrow, black and unstriped. There's little traffic, and I stop when I please to poke at the dried husk of a tarantula, or to feel sorry for half of a green snake, and to try and elicit a jump from the fat grasshoppers that pretend to be the polished desert stones.

Most people come to Peninsula Valdes to see larger animals. It's a coastal wildlife preserve, and from the observation tower of a visitor center I can see the blizzard of sea birds above a rocky island, and a mess of sea lions hauled up on a beach. Unlike television sea lions, these animals didn't mate or fight. They didn't even move.

I keep moving. The asphalt gives up, but it's only another 20 miles to the salina. The gravel road is fine, the sun is behind me, and the sharp side-wind is shifting to my back. I feel the pendulum of luck swinging my way. The sun is low and flooding the peninsula with a marvelous green-yellow light.

Salinas Grandes is a great bowl rimmed with grassy hillocks and sandy bluffs, a bowl 10 miles across and several hundred feet deep. I glimpse what appears to be sky in the bottom of the bowl. Water.

I zip down a small track. A lime-green lizard shoots across the road, like a party favor celebrating my arrival, so I stop and have a festive drink of wine. I am almost to the shore of the salina when I hear a dog and the diesel cough of a pickup truck. I am all smiles, but the driver of the truck greets me with what I've never heard in 18 years of bicycle travel: "This is private property. A tourist can't come here."

There are no humans in the surrounding 100 square miles. But Mr. Fernandez says, "If I let one person camp, I'll have to let others." It's hopeless. Mr. Fernandez, I presume, once had a bad tourist experience. He tells me to go to Salina Chica. "It looks the same." He drives me back up to the main road, drops me off, then heads for the mainland.

I ride the other way. I may have been ejected only one mile from the salina, but it's a big place and there's bound to be another road.

There is, but there's a sand trap I must push through, and dried mud ruts. I'm losing the sun. I pedal furiously, enticed by glimpses of the inland sea. For the first time I see that it is pink, too. Pink and blue and white-rimmed.

I reach the shore 30 seconds before the sun drops below the horizon. The full moon is rising over a shore of salt. The pink is algae, the sort of phytoplankton that gives flamingoes their color.

I make camp in a hollow, out of the wind. For company I have a whistling bird and the slap of waves on the shore. I finish my ham sandwich and take another drink of wine. I feel good. The cold rains of the Andes and the dust storms of the interior seem long ago. And I suddenly remember why I came: The low points on the planet are strange and lovely places.

And when I stand I can see the moonlight on the white salt shore, like snow. I take a stroll and when I turn and see the single flame from my lantern I realize that Mr. Fernandez is nowhere around and it's just me. I've made it, over the Andes, to the bottom of South America.

http://www.discovery.com/exp/pedal/pedal.html

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CNN Travel Now

TORRES DEL PAINE NATIONAL PARK, Chile (CNN) -- Some say Paine was a Welsh climber. Others say the name for Chile's Torres Del Paine comes from an Indian word meaning "blue."

The name's origin may be unclear, but undisputed is the magnificence of one of South America's most famous parks.

GALLERY

The Torres Del Paine is a hiker's paradise, nearly 450,000 acres packed with fantastic panoramas.

"The views are different every minute, because the clouds are there and then they're not and the sun's there and then it isn't," one traveler said. "It's been a spectacular sort of a bonding with nature out here."

Towers give park its name

A scenic highlight is the monoliths that give the park its name -- a group of stone towers, tucked between the rocky layers of Patagonia.

But they're just one of the many splendors at Torres Del Paine. You can watch rain clouds swarm around the mountainous landscape, admire the power of a giant waterfall, relish a view of the glaciers or gaze in awe at a condor's incredible wingspan.
The condor is among more than 100 species of birds, along with 25 species of mammals in the park.
A trip to the Torres del Paine is a spiritual journey for some.
"Sometimes you have to take time to find God and to speak with God," said another traveler. "I think that this is important for the human being, and for me this kind of trip is to find God."

Rustic comfort

Among the lodging options is the Explora, a hotel founded in 1993, which is planted on the edge of a glacial lake. 

Stephanie Oswald

http://fyi.cnn.com/2001/TRAVEL/DESTINATIONS/03/23/chile.patagonia/

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Chilean Mainland Patagonia

Roads are few and far between in southern Chile but the views they offer are some of the most spectacular in the Andes. The road from the Perito Moreno glacier crosses into Chile near Torres Del Paine (Paine's Towers) National Park. From there, it heads south to Puerto Natales where we will take a boat tour of Ultima Esperanza (Last Hope) Sound before continuing south to Punta Arenas, the southernmost mainland city.
 
Perhaps the most impressive peaks in the Andes are located in Torres Del Paine National Park, Chile. These rugged, glacially-carved towers exhibit a granodiorite base capped by black, marine shales with interbedded tuffs. Glaciers still occupy some of the cirques around the towers. The Patagonian Ice Sheet terminates just north of these peaks.

 

This view of the main towers shows the knife-edged arête that cuts deep into the Cretaceous granodiorite.
A small glacier is still present in the cirque shown here. Recently, Chrysler Corporation released a series of advertisements that were filmed around these peaks.



The black shales were deposited in a euxinic back-arc basin that developed in the early stages of the Andean Orogeny in southern Chile.
 
Guanacos, the wild llama species, abound in the national park. They are usually skittish and run at the first sight of humans but in the park they are remarkably tame and approachable on foot. The guanaco was the main source of food for the native population that once inhabited the Patagonian interior.

 
Like the guanaco, the rhea, or South American ostrich, is usually quite skittish--except in the national park. Rheas abound in Patagonia. It is not uncommon to see hundreds of them in a single day. They are communal birds who care for each other's young. Frequently, up to two dozen chicks are seen following a single pair of adults.
 


Two large sounds, Seno Skyring and Seno Otway were gouged out by glaciers descending from the Andes to the west. They were explored by Captain Fitzroy and the H. M. S. Beagle on the voyage that preceded the epic journey of discovery on which Charles Darwin was the ship's naturalist.

There is the north shore of Seno Skyring with the Andes in the distance. The two sounds are separated by Isla Riesco. The road between the sounds runs along the Fitzroy Channel which connects the two.
 
The Fitzroy Channel looks to the south from Isla Riesco. The channel opens into Seno Otway. Numerous terrace levels are developed on both sides of the channel. The owner of the Hotel Río Verde operates the ferry between the mainland and the island.
 
Glacial features dominate the southern edge of the continent. A drumlin field is wedged between the Patagonian plateau and the Straits of Magellan, situated about 10 miles to the Southwest.

 http://tornado.brevard.edu/~reynoljh/patagonia/chile.htm

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Exploring The "Uttermost Part Of The Earth":

Antarctica, Cape Horn & Patagonia

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Patagonian Glacier Expedition