Patagonia

Introducing Patagonia

A star-riddled sky and snarled grasses dwarf the rider on the steppe as his horse closes the gap on the horizon. In South America’s southern frontier, nature, long left to its own devices, grows wild, barren and beautiful. Spaces are large, as are the silences that fill them. For those who come here, an encounter with such emptiness can be as awesome as the sight of jagged peaks, pristine rivers and dusty backwater oases.

The paving of Ruta Nacional 40 (RN 40) is well under way, but it remains among the world’s loneliest stretches, a spellbinding road to nowhere that has stirred affection in personalities as disparate as Butch Cassidy and Bruce Chatwin. On the eastern seaboard, RN 3 shoots south, connecting oil boomtowns with the remains of ancient petrified forests, Welsh settlements and the spectacular Península Valdés. The map will tell you that Patagonia is a very large place, but motoring its distant horizons offers a whole other level of insight.

Then there is the other, trendy Patagonia: the tourist hubs studded with Ray-Ban shops and reggae bars, where you will meet a dozen other travelers before one local. El Calafate and El Chaltén boast spectacular sights, but they remain a world apart from the mythical RN 40.

Last updated: Feb 17, 2009