Patagonia
Discover Patagonia
Introduction
Patagonia is the bottom third of Argentina and it is mostly empty: a plateau of wind-scoured steppe running east from the Andes to the Atlantic, with fewer than two people per square kilometre across an area larger than France.
Along the western edge the mountains hold the country’s best walking. San Carlos de Bariloche sits on a glacial lake among forest and ski slopes in the Lake District; El Chaltén, eight hundred kilometres south, is a village built at the foot of Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre with the trails starting at the end of the street. Between them, the Perito Moreno glacier calves into Lake Argentino and is one of the very few large glaciers on earth that is not retreating.
On the Atlantic side, Puerto Madry is the gateway to the Valdés peninsula, where southern right whales calve between June and December, elephant seals and sea lions breed on the beaches, and orcas have learned to strand themselves deliberately to take seal pups off the shingle. Further south, Punta Tombo holds hundreds of thousands of Magellanic penguins. At the very end, Ushiaia on the Beagle Channel calls itself the southernmost city in the world and is the departure port for most Antarctic voyages. The wind is constant; December to March is the season.