How to describe Patagonia? It’s different. Different than other places, different than I expected. Different, but in a good way. I envisioned Patagonia to be a far-off place with towering mountains and glaciers, a place of exquisite beauty. We certainly found those things in Patagonia, but they are not Patagonia.
In preparation for this journey, I read Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia, a travelogue he wrote 40 years ago. I very much enjoyed his book, but it was very different from what I was expecting. Like Patagonia. Instead of cataloguing and describing the immense natural beauty of the place, he focused on the odd collection of people that have been drawn to Patagonia over the years and illustrates this with anecdotes of the odd collection of people he met. Nowhere does he mention Torres Del Paine, but several chapters follow the trail of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid through Patagonia—where they spent some years—before they were forced to flee to Bolivia. Like the place, I found the book different, but in a good way. A few months after reading the book, we were travelling by bus through Patagonia. We left Torres Del Paine early in the morning. Three buses and a border crossing later we were travelling from El Calafate, a small city mentioned in the book, to El Chalten, a smaller place that didn’t exist when Chatwin was travelling. For several hours we passed countless miles of plains with the occasional rolling hill, all covered with yellow grass. If it weren’t for the occasional rhea or guanaco, we could have been travelling across the Great Basin. Nothing at all like the Chilean fjords, with towering mountains, endless ocean passages and ceaseless rain. For most of the last leg of our journey, we were tormented by a loud beeping noise blaring from the cockpit of the bus. We were travelling north on Routa 40—the Argentine equivalent of Route 66—through this desolate grassland, more than a hundred miles from our destination, when we learned that the source of our agony was an alarm indicating engine trouble. Our driver pulled over at a small roadside station to work on the engine. Inside of the station, an entire wall was dedicated to Butch & Sundance, with photographs and newspaper clippings recalling the month that they had to hide out at this very spot after committing one of the crimes that ruined their attempt to become respectable ranchers in Patagonia. It occurred to me then that Chatwin may not have travelled to Patagonia with the intention of writing about Welch villages or American outlaws, but that is what he found there. Patagonia is like that. I decided to reread his book and found that I enjoyed it, even more, the second time.
I think the best description of Patagonia can be found in Chatwin’s book: It’s the farthest place our ancestors’ ancestors could walk to. It’s remote, desolate, with peculiar patches of civilization. It is diverse, with areas of incomparable beauty. Patagonia is unique.
We made it to the Towers!