Following this period of relative youth, I still wasn’t ready to settle down and wound up spending the last several years of the 1980’s commuting between graduate school in San Luis Obispo, California and numerous, short-term contract jobs in the Philippines. It wasn’t until 1990 that I decided it was time to settle into a career and I considered myself lucky when I landed a job with the Arizona Game and Fish Department.

But my traveling days were far from over and, with the Department, I still managed to move from one job to another such that, over the course of my 23+ year career, I lived in Page, Flagstaff, Phoenix (two different times), Canyon Creek, Yuma and finally -- Pinetop. Now, having retired from the Department in 2014, I have been quite content to stay very local (i.e. hiking and biking in the White Mountains) with annual camping forays to the Four-Corners area and a couple of longer camping trips elsewhere in the Western United States.

This past summer, however, I was invited to join an old friend on a major adventure: a three-week tour of the Patagonia region of South America. For those who may not know much about Patagonia, it is a massive chunk of wild country in the southern portions of both Chile and Argentina. Because the trip was so extensive (both in terms of duration and distances), I have found it difficult to motivate myself to write about it. Things weren’t helped any by the fact that, during our travels, I managed to lose my notebook which was intended to hold a chronological log of the voyage and which, once back home, I had expected would serve as both the factual foundation and the inspiration for a book-length narrative of our travels.

In the hopes that I might yet still find the wherewithal to compose a significant travelogue of our expedition, I decided that I would try a few short articles within the pages of “Outdoors Southwest.” The Patagonia trip was, after all, deep in the southern portion of the Western Hemisphere and therefore, conceivably part of this magazine’s geographic range….

My traveling companion was an old grad school chum, by the name of Rick. He and his wife, June, each had long and successful careers in engineering (Rick) and nursing (June). In the years since they had both cut back on their hours, they had become world travelers (Europe, New Zealand, Canada and Alaska, to name a few of their destinations). They traveled in comfort and kept risks to a minimum. As such, I was surprised to hear Rick describe his basic plans for the fall of 2019.

I listened as he elaborated: “First off, June isn’t interested in this trip; she thinks it sounds too rustic. In fact, nobody I know is keen on the idea. My goal is to see as much as possible of Patagonia’s mountain and glacier regions as I can in three weeks. And since I know you live on a pretty tight budget, I promise we’ll do the whole thing on a shoe-string.”

I was intrigued but cautious. I explained to Rick that I hadn’t flown overseas in 30 years and hadn’t even set foot on a plane since 2010 when I attended a family reunion in Chicago. I further explained that, not only did I loathe 21st Century air travel, but that I simply had lost my desire to venture anywhere further than the western United States. and, that even when I made those rare forays, I always drove my truck and camped out.

Rick seized on the camping part of what I had said and quickly interjected that, at the heart of our voyage, we would visit Chile’s most legendary National Park, Torres del Paine, for a four-day and fifty-mile backpacking trip right through the heart of glacier country. “And that wouldn’t be all,” he continued, “we’d also be hitting various natural areas throughout the Region for self-guided trekking trips deep into the mountains -- long day hikes.”

I continued to resist but, to make a long story less long, Rick possesses amazing powers of persuasion and, when he promised to keep the price tag below 3,000 bucks each (all expenses included), I began to weaken. I suggested that he delve into the logistical details while I read up on Patagonia’s geography, geology, flora and fauna (especially the bird life) and we’d talk again in a couple of weeks.

Because I’ve spent a significant chunk of my life both reading about and watching nature shows pertaining to all things wild, I already had a basic understanding of the biota of Patagonia (guanacos, condors, rheas and pum all leapt to mind). But, during the course of my pre-trip research, it became apparent that Patagonia, while not nearly as species-rich as the tropical realm not far to its north, was truly a wild land. What it lacked in faunal diversity and abundance, it made up for by having critters that were relatively unfamiliar with humans and which could therefore be more readily seen and studied.

Furthermore, when you happen upon wildlife in Patagonia, you are seeing said wildlife in some of the most breath-taking scenery on planet earth. In fact, having now been to Patagonia, let me just say that I will forever associate the Region with five primary qualities: Stunning beauty; endless fascination; harsh ruggedness; isolated remoteness; crowded trails and campgrounds.

Yes, yes, I know -- that last descriptor appears incongruous and doesn’t seem to mesh with the previous four. So, let me now take a moment to expand a bit on each of the five. First, beauty: Nature and Art have much in common but, at their core, a fundamental truth applies -- their beauty lies totally in “the eye of the beholder.” For some, Nature’s most inspirational beauty might be found in the still waters of a swamp; teeming with life and high in biological productivity. For others, the shifting sands of a seemingly barren desert might represent the pinnacle of Nature’s beauty. You can perhaps determine your own preferred standard of beauty by reflecting back over all the many places you’ve gone for vacations during your lifetime.

There are many -- including myself -- who simply can not pick a preferred place (or habitat) in which to spend time. I can say though, that Patagonia surely must rank very high for those who value the beauty of austere, snow-clad, jagged mountains. Other than the mountains of the northern Rockies and (to a much lesser extent) the Alps of Western Europe, I haven’t done much hiking or camping in alpine habitats. In Part Two of this article, I will write more about the beauty of Patagonia’s mountains but first, let me finish my basic discussion of the Region’s five primary allures.

Much like “beauty,” what one finds “fascinating” in the world around us is a relative matter. Of all the natural elements one can observe in Patagonia, the one that most captured my fancy was its glaciers. Just the basics alone are compelling: their origins and evolution; their size and physical presence; their distribution and abundance; their future. Again, I will touch on some of these things in Part Two.

Regarding Patagonia’s ruggedness, well, suffice to say the name Patagonia is virtually synonymous with harshly rugged lands. In its southern most realms lies Tierra del Fuego (“land of fire”) which Charles Darwin considered to be the most inhospitable place he ever visited during the entire voyage of the HMS Beagle (the British sailing ship on which he famously served as Naturalist). While Rick and I didn’t travel as far south as Tierra del Fuego, we did see plenty of country that was simply too steep, slippery and unstable for hiking. Additionally, in much of the Region, a howling wind frequently kicks up and there were times when we were forced to hike with our heads down and our shoulders leaning into gales that threatened to blow us backwards.

When it comes to isolated remoteness (my fourth descriptor of Patagonia), let me just say that, to get to the various portions of the Region where we hiked and camped, it took three domestic flights, umpteen bus trips and a boat ride. And during the plane, boat and bus rides, when you looked out the windows mostly what you saw included 1) uninhabited “steppe” habitats (somewhat like the North American “plains” or Africa’s “savannas”); 2) foreboding and strangely vegetated forests and 3) imposing and un-scalable mountains and glaciers -- all of which were uncomfortably frigid in spring and fall and dangerously cold in winter.

Last -- but not least (definitely not “least”) -- were the crowds of people -- nearly all of whom appeared to be of the young, rich, international tourist/traveler variety. Here, too, I will delve more into this component of Patagonia in Part Two of this narrative. Speaking of which, tune in again next month as I continue my impressions of life down-under.

All photos by Richard Barzan