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Enigmatic Austral Patagonia
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I am fascinated with Patagonia; so much as to that i would love to write a poem, but this creative skill, I do not possess. This place has to be experienced, it's hard to describe. I never read Bruce Chatwin's "In Patagonia" or Paul Theroux's "The Old Patagonia Express". I would have liked to experience the Patagonia of the early days, the days of pioneers and indians. During my 3 day Route 40 trip from Bariloche to Patagonia, I admired the endless steppe (farmland as far as the eye can see, this land is owned by three argentine families and some global companies), sunsets at 9:45PM, beautiful horses and graceful guanacos. Patagonia is a place to get lost in - the andean range, the woods, the steppe, the glaciers, the lakes, the rivers, the eratic rocks, the majestic mountains, the endless skies, the wind, the cold weather, the caves, the cave paintings, the bushes of wild fruits and thorns, the guanaco, the ñandu, the sheep, the farms, ......the indians?
It's a place to come back to, to trek for days on the continental icefield, to camp around Fitz Roy, to go horseback riding, to live on an estancia, to learn how to shear sheep, to make calafate berry pie, to ride your bike......a place where Darwin's law of survival of the fittest plays out daily, a place that is harsh and unforgiven, where animals and plants have to be strong enough to survive the harsh environment, a place where the animals are left in the pasture the entire year, summer and winter, and where countless skeltons and bones tell the story of death.....
The glaciers and icebergs are Chile's and Argentina's priced commodity for the future - a source of water.
A bit of history
Before the arrival of the Spaniards, several indigenous groups populated the region. The yámanas, and onas or selknam were in Tierra del Fuego. The continent was populated with the pehuenches, mapuches and tehuelches. According to interpretations, the region owes the name to the tehuelches. Apparently, they were very tall and with a well developed physique so the Spaniards called them "Patagones", relating them to a giant called "Patagón", a very popular character in some novels of those times. Another version related to the origin of the word Patagonia also making reference to the tehuelches, but in this case it says that the name comes from the huge tracks they left in the snow, due in part to their physique and also to the fact that they covered their feet with skins.
Today, most of the Patagonian aborigines live in reservations or work in estancias. The mapuches constitute the biggest community, with some 35,000 people. Remains of the primitive life of indigenous people are found in caverns with paintings and stone deposits called "picaderos" where even today arrow heads and different tools can be found.
Facts about Patagonia
The Argentine Patagonia is located in the south of the American continent. It extends from the Colorado River to Tierra del Fuego. Its topography can be compared to gigantic stairs with the highest step being the Andean Range, then descending to a terraced plateau that culminates in the Atlantic Ocean generally with cliffs. This particular terrain has three well differentiated zones: the Andean Patagonia, the Atlantic Patagonia and the Central Patagonia. It is one of the least populated regions in the world, with a density in some places of 1 inhabitant per square kilometer. The climate is generally cold, although summers are hot in the central strip.
Temperatures descend as one goes south, due to its vicinity to the polar zone. But the most characteristic feature of the Patagonian climate is the wind. The winds in this region originate in the Pacific Ocean, they download their humidity in the Andean mountains, causing abundant rains, and then sweep with great intensity over the enormous barren plateaus.
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