This is a place of reflection. Where the Austral sun bathes in the mercury lap of the southern seas, where an icy breath buffs the land to a shine
and scuds lilac clouds across an upturned sky.Patagonia is not a country, or a political region. It's too big to constrain with boundaries. In fact it's so big Argentina and Chile decided to share it, neatly dividing
up its best bits and then squabbling over where the border was supposed to go. The canny Chilenos managed to offload the millions of acres of virtually useless scrub and nearly every year Argentina wakes up and finds
another picturesque island has mysteriously changed hands.
On the western side, the tail of the Andes curls round in the shape of a tear, the land rolling away to the north-east over a flat, treeless plain which
stretches for hundreds of kilometres. The jagged granite teeth of Torres del Paine and Fitzroy national parks gape at the heavens open mouthed, glacial tongues spewing out electric blue bergs which bob out into lakes
the colour of milk.
My journey in Patagonia started around 1,000km south of Buenos Aires, in Puerto Madryn, where Welsh settlers landed in the 19th century in search of (more) sheep country. Today P.Madryn is an odd
mix of frontier-town austerity and quaint little Welsh tea rooms, where you can relive the Valleys with Mr and Mrs Pablo Jones.
The real centres of attention however, and the reason anyone braves the smell from the
fish meal and aluminium plants, are the elephant seals and southern right whales which frolic in the cold waters off the Peninsula Valdes, huge blubber-sacks, spouting and farting while gaping visitors reel off the
celluloid.
Further south (another 1000km) and towards the western mountain chain, lie the main Patagonian attractions. The Perito Moreno glacier covers 260 square kilometres and presents a terminal wall of ice 70
metres high which creaks and groans as car-sized lumps of vivid cyan ice topple into the melt water lake. 37 people have died since 1970 from flying ice chips while marvelling at its unearthliness.
In the same region
is the Fitzroy national park with its namesake mountain towering above the surrounding forests. This is border country and most transport routes involve at least one laborious crossing. While the Argies may feel pretty
smug at having the world's most photogenic ice cube and a big pointy mountain, Chile lays claim to arguably the second most evocative vista in South America (Machu Pikachu being numero uno). Torres del Paine national
park lives up to its reputation. It looks like the world that Collins, Coleridge and De Quincey might have conjured up in their opiate-driven dreams. Emerald green lakes and soaring jagged peaks circled by majestic
condors, babbling brooks meandering through lush valleys and cascading waterfalls drifting in the wind.
Still, it's difficult to appreciate the splendour of such countryside when every step is agonisingly softened by
various bulbous skin-bags of pus. Blisters and chafing, the hiker's immortal enemies.
Perceptions of two nations. Chile reminds me increasingly of Eastern Europe. It cloaks a stable, if plodding economy (all too rare
around here) with austerity but a strict and conservative society can't hide the warmth of the people. It views Argentina with barely concealed loftiness, hard working and thrifty, a life of relative comfort while it's
neighbour wallows helplessly on the morning after, numb from indulgence and corruption, nursing an almighty economic hangover and gagging for an IMF Alka Seltzer.
Argentina is the most accessible of South American
countries. It most resembles the culture and variety of Europe, the majority of citizens having some Italian, Spanish or German ancestry. But it can't shake off the chaos of this Latin maelstrom. Every attempt to be
legitimate, to be progressive, to be a world player, is thrown off kilter by the need to make a quick buck, to take the short cut, to find the easy way up. Politics is riddled with ineptitude and corruption and the
horror of the past still echoes on the streets of the towns and cities. Every week the mothers of those 'disappeared' in the 1970's walk round a square in Buenos Aires, just to make sure no one forgets.
Bariloche is a
case in point. One of the centres of the Lake District, a region blessed with Alpine beauty, Bariloche keeps on turning, churning out the steak, wine and country pursuits, but the cracks are beginning to show. For a
town of its modest size, there are a surprising number of homeless and children seeking handouts, derelict half-built hotels and the general flotsam of hard times. The pleasure-seekers are no longer the middle classes,
but the upper tier of Argentinian society and the extranjeros or 'foreigners'. Like Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador, a two-tier price system is starting to appear - gringos wield the economic muscle, so they are taxed
accordingly.
But despite its troubles, Argentina still possesses a vast trove of natural treasures. It's a relaxing and yet thrilling country. I have respected it accordingly with the largest portion of my trip.
Chile on the other hand is more measured, more content to get on with its business while making just enough room for a few extra people to come and visit. The island of Chiloe, just south of Puerto Montt, is so like the
west of England that, for me, the sudden pace of travel slowed to a crawl, fishing boats chugging up green river estuaries reminiscent of southern Devon and Cornwall, wide flat beaches of mud and rising tides fading
under a misty, setting sun, smoke rising from cottages, dogs barking in gardens of flowers and willow. A time warp. A home from home.
From Chiloe, from the Lake District, through the granite towers and ice
caps of southern Patagonia, the road heads south to where the ferry crosses the Magellan straights into the Land of Fire. At the end of the world, lies Ushuaia. An Argentinian town marooned beyond a tract of Chile on
the island of Tierra del Fuego. A town of corrugated houses in primary colours, of dusty streets and a surrounding crown of snow-capped mountains. In Ushuaia, the most southerly town in the world, the Pan American
highway ends and begins, 18,000kms of tarmac and dirt track leading to the water's edge, to a headland where the sky meets the ocean. Here, the lukewarm sun reflects from the lapping water just 900 kms from Antarctica.
