Patagonia Travel Guide

An immense land of arid steppe, seemingly stretching into infinity, Patagonia is famed for its adventures and adventurers, for marvellous myths and fabulous facts. Its geographical immensity is paralleled only by the size of its reputation – which has taken on legendary proportions, thanks partly to writers such as Bruce Chatwin, William Henry Hudson and Paul Theroux, as well as Charles Darwin. As a region of extremes, it has few equals in the world: from the biting winds that howl off the Southern Patagonian Icecap – the planet’s largest area of permanent ice away from the poles – to the hearthside warmth of old-time Patagonian hospitality; from the lowest point on the South American continent, the Gran Bajo de San Julián, to the savagely beautiful peaks of the Fitz Roy massif; from the mesmerizingly sterile plains along the coastline to the astoundingly rich marine fauna that thrives just offshore.

What to see in Patagonia

One of southern Argentina’s principal arteries, RN-3 stretches from the capital all the way down to austral Río Gallegos. The highlight of this Atlantic fringe of Patagonia is the wildlife, especially at the Península Valdés reserve, famous for its whale-watching, but also at Punta Tombo, the continent’s largest penguin colony. Further south, in Santa Cruz Province, colonies of sea birds perch on spectacular porphyry cliffs at Puerto Deseado and Commerson’s dolphins frolic in the ría, or estuary, just outside the town. This coastal area helped define the Patagonian pioneering spirit: Welsh settlers landed on a beach just south of Península Valdés, at what is now Puerto Madryn, and gradually ventured into the Lower Chubut Valley. Their cultural legacy survives in settlements such as Gaiman and Trelew.

The second main road here is the famous RN-40 (Ruta 40), which starts at Cabo Vírgenes, the most southerly point of mainland Argentina, and hugs the Andean backbone all the way up to the country’s northerly tip. Some of the destinations in this western fringe are difficult to reach without your own transport (and not always that easy with it), but it is along or close by this route that you’ll find Argentine Patagonia’s hallmark features: impressive national parks brimming with wild beauty, great mountain lakes, the finest spit-roast lamb asados and some unique skies. The Cañón of Río Pinturas is home to one of Argentina’s most famous archeological sites, the Cueva de las Manos Pintadas, with its striking, age-old rock art; to the west two beautiful, wind-whipped lakes, Posadas and Pueyrredón, lie in a seldom-visited area in the lee of stately San Lorenzo peak. Further north is an outstanding geological curiosity, the Bosque Petrificado Sarmiento, a beguiling collection of ancient fossilized trees, while to the south stretches the wilderness of Parque Nacional Perito Moreno, one of the most inaccessible – and, consequently, untouched – of Argentina’s national parks, with excellent hiking trails.

The region’s climax is reached, however, with two of the country’s star attractions: the trekking and climbing paradise of the Fitz Roy sector of Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, accessed from the laidback town of El Chaltén; and the patriotically blue-and-white hues of craggy Glaciar Perito Moreno, one of the world’s natural wonders, within easy reach of the tourist hotspot of El Calafate.

Brief history of Patagonia

For over ten thousand years, before the arrival of European seafarers in the sixteenth century, Patagonia was exclusively the domain of nomadic indigenous groups. It was Ferdinand Magellan who coined the name “Patagonia” on landing at Bahía San Julián. The tales related by these early mariners awed and frightened their countrymen back home, mutating into myths of a godless, dangerous region.

European colonization

Two centuries of sporadic attempts to colonize the inhospitable coastlands only partially ameliorated Patagonia’s unwholesome aura. In 1779, the Spanish established Carmen de Patagones, which managed to survive as a trading centre on the Patagonian frontier. In doing so, it fared considerably better than other early settlements: Puerto de los Leones, near Camarones (1535); Nombre de Jesús, by the Strait of Magellan (late 1580s); Floridablanca, near San Julián (1784); and San José on the Península Valdés (1779). All failed miserably, the last crushed by a Tehuelche attack in 1810 after toughing it out for twenty years. Change was afoot, nevertheless. In 1848,

Chile founded Punta Arenas on the Strait of Magellan, and in 1865, fired by their visionary faith, a group of Welsh Nonconformists arrived in the Lower Chubut Valley. Rescued from starvation in the early years by Tehuelche communities and Argentine government subsidies, they managed to establish a stable agricultural colony by the mid-1870s.

Sheep farming and the oil industry

In the late nineteenth century, Patagonia changed forever with the introduction of sheep, originally brought across from the Islas Malvinas/Falkland Islands. The region’s image shifted from one of hostility and hardship to that of an exciting frontier, where the “white gold” of wool opened the path to fabulous fortunes for pioneer investors. The transformation was complete within a generation: the plains were fenced in and roads were run from the coast to the cordillera. Indigenous populations were booted out of their ancestral lands, while foxes and pumas were poisoned en masse to make way for gigantic estancias. By the early 1970s, there were over sixteen million sheep grazing the fragile pastures on over a thousand of these ranches. Later, the region’s confidence and wealth blossomed further with the discovery of oil, spurring the growth of industry in towns such as Comodoro Rivadavia.

Plummeting international wool prices and desertification, though, eventually brought sheep farming to its knees, with the final blow being the eruption of Volcán Hudson in 1991, which buried immense areas of grazing land in choking ash. To make matters worse, the oil industry also went through a massive downturn.

Patagonia today

Today the picture is more positive. Although there are hundreds of abandoned estancias in Santa Cruz alone, the Patagonian economy has generally improved in recent years: in 2018 wool prices reached record levels, and tourist numbers have steadily risen. However, serious challenges remain. In 2015 work started on a controversial, Chinese-funded US$5.7 billion hydroelectric scheme to create two massive dams and flood an area the size of Buenos Aires some 150km east of El Calafate. While the project promises to bring jobs and investment, there are serious and widespread concerns about the environmental and long-term political impact, not least on Parque Nacional los Glaciares.

Getting around Patagonia

Distances are huge, but most cities and towns are served by regular buses. However, to make the most of the more remote places, such as Península Valdés and along Ruta 40, you really need to rent a car. Note also that some bus services do not operate out of season (Easter–Sept), above all along and around Ruta 40, while others are severely curtailed.

The RN-3 coastal route

A journey along the seemingly endless RN-3, with a few detours just off it, offers many opportunities – albeit at great distances from one another – to marvel at magnificent wildlife; nowhere is this easier or more rewarding than at the world-class reserve of Península Valdés, best accessed from the seaside town of Puerto Madryn. In addition you can check out Patagonia’s fascinating Welsh legacy in the villages of the Lower Chubut Valley near Trelew, while nature lovers will want to see the huge Magellanic penguin colony at Punta Tombo. The long trip can be broken up with stopovers in a trio of typical austral ports, Puerto Deseado, Puerto San Julián and Puerto Santa Cruz, each with its own wealth of marine wildlife and historical associations. A short way south of the last of these three, Monte León, the country’s newest national park – and the first to be created on the coast – is well worth a visit even if the marvellous estancia in its midst is beyond your budget. With your own transport, you could also fit in a side-trip to the curious petrified forests of the Monumento Natural Bosques Petrificados, or the Bosque Petrificado Sarmiento, closer to the Ruta 40 but accessible from the coast, too. The end of the road – and seemingly the end of the world – is reached at workaday Río Gallegos, a jumping-off point for travelling on to Tierra del Fuego or for starting a journey northwards along the RN-40.

Península Valdés

Península Valdés, a sandy-beige, treeless hump of land connected to the mainland by a 35km isthmus, is one of the planet’s most significant marine reserves, gaining World Heritage status in 1999. It was beautifully evoked by Gerald Durrell in The Whispering Land: “It was almost as if the peninsula and its narrow isthmus was a cul-de-sac into which all the wildlife of Chubut had drained and from which it could not escape.” No description, however, prepares you for the astonishing richness of the marine environment that surrounds it – most notably the southern right whales that migrate here each year to frolic in the waters off the village of Puerto Pirámides – nor the immense animal colonies that live at the feet of the peninsula’s steep, crumbly cliffs.

The first attempt to establish a permanent settlement here was made in 1779 by Juan de la Piedra, who constructed a fort on the shores of the Golfo San José. A small number of settlers tried to scrape a living by extracting salt, but the colony was abandoned in 1810 after attacks by the local Tehuelche; an extremely limited salt-extraction industry exists to this day in the saltpans at the bottom of Argentina’s second-deepest depression, the Salina Grande, 42m below sea level, in the centre of the peninsula. However, it is nature tourism that’s the pot of gold now, with Punta Delgada, Punta Cantor and Punta Norte, along with Caleta Valdés, providing some of the best opportunities on the continent for viewing marine mammals such as elephant seals and sea lions. How the recent discovery of oil and shale gas reserves in the vicinity of the reserve will affect this remains unclear at present.

Be warned not to collect your own shellfish in the area, because of the possibility of periodic red-tide outbreaks; all shellfish served in restaurants is safe to eat.

Visiting Península Valdés

Many people see Península Valdés on a day-trip from Puerto Madryn, following a fairly standard route that visits the lookout point for Isla de los Pájaros, Puerto Pirámides (where a whale-watching boat trip costs around $1800), Punta Cantor and Caleta Valdés, and either Punta Norte or Punta Delgada. Be sure to find out exactly what sights you’re visiting and how long you’ll get in each place (most tours stay 1hr at each destination), whether the guide speaks English and the size of the group (some companies use large buses). Tours are long (10–12hr), so bring picnic provisions, though you can buy lunch in Puerto Pirámides.

If you want to visit the peninsula independently, the Mar y Valle bus service links Puerto Madryn with Puerto Pirámides. However, it’s difficult to get from Pirámides to the rest of Península Valdés without your own wheels.

Undoubtedly the best way to see the peninsula is to rent a car from Trelew or Puerto Madryn, allowing you to decide how long you want to spend wildlife-watching, and to time your arrival at Punta Norte or Caleta Valdés for high tide, when there’s the best chance of seeing orcas; it also gives you the freedom to stay at an estancia, recommended for a better appreciation of what makes the peninsula so special. Do not attempt to rush, however, especially if this is your first experience of driving on unsurfaced roads – serious crashes and fatalities happen with alarming regularity on the peninsula, especially after rain. When renting, check what happens if you break down or have a minor accident, as rescue bills can be hefty.

The whale-watching season runs from mid-June to mid-December, but the best time to visit the peninsula is from September to November, when elephant seals are also active, the penguin colonies have returned to breed and, if you’re lucky, you stand a chance of seeing orcas cruising behind the spit at Caleta Valdés.

Chubut Province: the Welsh heartland

If you’re coming to Chubut Province looking for Argentina’s answer to Snowdonia, think again. Not only is there not a mountain in sight, but also the Welsh, like the Tehuelche before them, have been absorbed almost seamlessly into Argentina’s diverse cultural identity. Under the surface, though, there remain vestiges of their pioneering culture and a real pride in both the historical legacy – evident in the number of fine Welsh chapels dotted across the farmlands of the Lower Chubut Valley – and the current cultural connection that goes well beyond the touristy trappings.

Halting Welsh is still spoken by some of the third- or fourth-generation residents in the main towns of Trelew and Gaiman, even if it isn’t the language of common usage, and whereas it once seemed doomed to die out, the tongue now appears to be enjoying a limited renaissance. In municipal schools today, young students have the option to study the language of their forebears: a team of Welsh teachers works in Chubut, and cultural exchanges with Mam Cymru are thriving – two or three pupils are sent annually from Chubut to Welsh universities and numerous delegations from different associations ply across the Atlantic. It’s not all one way either: scholars have come from Wales to study the manuscripts left by pioneers and seek inspiration from what they pronounce to be the purity of the language that was preserved in Patagonia.

Gaiman

The town of Gaiman, 16km west of Trelew along the RN-25, sits amid lush pastures and poplar trees that – in clement weather, at least – form a landscape more like a Monet watercolour than typical Patagonia. It’s a pleasant place and the most eminently “Welsh” of the area’s settlements. A visit to a Welsh tearoom is a must, and there are various monuments built by or dedicated to the settlers dotted around town: keep an eye out for the handsome brick Capilla Bethel, a chapel dating back to 1913, and the squat stone Primera Casa (First House), which was built in 1874, and looks as if it has been transplanted from Snowdonia. Mini-eisteddfodau are held in Gaiman in mid-September and the first week of May.

The highlight of a visit to Gaiman is working your way through a mountain of cakes over afternoon tea at a Welsh tearoom (casa de té), some of which are owned and run by descendants of the original Welsh settlers. They all serve similar arrays of cake, toast, scones and home-made jams; the most traditional component is the torta negra (dark fruit cake), originally a wedding gift to be eaten on a couple’s first anniversary.

The Lower Chubut Valley

West of Trelew is the broad Lower Chubut Valley, a fertile ribbon of land amid some barren steppe, thanks to the Río Chubut, which flows through here from the Andes. The river derives its name from the Tehuelche word “chupat”, meaning clean or transparent. The Welsh began using the Chubut to irrigate the valley in 1867, and it was dammed a hundred years later to ensure a more predictable flow to the farm plots, while also generating electricity for industrial development around Trelew. A string of well-maintained Welsh chapels (capillas galesas) line the Chubut, including – just south of Trelew – the Capilla Moriah; dating from 1880 it’s the oldest in Argentina and many of the original settlers are buried in its cemetery. The small towns along the river’s route are all charming and, though you won’t exactly hear Welsh spoken in the streets, the legacy of pioneering times is still detectable.

Trelew

The medium-sized town of Trelew – its Welsh name means the “village of Lewis”, in honour of Lewis Jones, its founder – rose to prominence after the completion, in 1889, of the rail link to Puerto Madryn, which allowed easy export of the burgeoning agricultural yields. Today it is home to a couple of excellent museums, while its good transport connections make it a convenient base from which to explore the surrounding Welsh settlements of the Lower Chubut Valley and, to the south, the famous penguin colony at Punta Tombo. The only downside is the shortage of appealing accommodation – nearby Gaiman has a far better selection.

The coast of Santa Cruz Province

The stretch of the RN-3 south of Cabo Dos Bahías encompasses some pretty dreary towns, not least the oil-hub of Comodoro Rivadavia – a dire place best avoided, though it does have some useful transport links, including an airport. While this section of eastern Patagonia must claim some of the most desolate scenery in Argentina, there are some natural gems threaded along it: the Ría Deseado estuary at Puerto Deseado, with its handsome porphyry cliffs and marvellous opportunities to view dolphins and penguins at close quarters; the tremendous trunks of fossilized araucaria monkey puzzles in the Monumento Natural Bosques Petrificados; and Puerto San Julián, a historic town with access to one of the most conveniently situated penguin colonies in Patagonia. Farther south you could also break the excruciatingly long distances of largely uneventful coastline into more manageable chunks by stopping at Comandante Luis Piedra Buena, known for its fishing, or Parque Nacional Monte León, Argentina’s first coastal national park, in which a century-old estancia offers some of the area’s finest lodgings.

The birthplace of Patagonia

Puerto San Julián can rightfully claim to be the birthplace of Patagonia. In 1520, during Magellan’s stay in the bay, the very first encounter occurred between the Europeans and the “giants” of this nameless land, when, it is believed, the explorer bestowed on them the name “patagon” (literally “big foot”) in reference to their comparatively large build. As related by Antonio Pigafetta, the expedition’s chronicler: “One day, without anyone expecting it, we saw a giant, who was on the shore of the sea, quite naked, and was dancing and leaping, and singing, and whilst singing he put sand and dust on his head… When he was before us he began to be astonished, and to be afraid, and he raised one finger on high, thinking that we came from heaven. He was so tall that the tallest of us only came up to his waist… The captain named this kind of people Patagon.” On Palm Sunday, April 1, 1520, Magellan celebrated the first Mass on Argentine soil, near a site marked by a cross, down by the town’s port.

Punta Tombo

Punta Tombo is by far the largest single colony of penguins on the continent, with a population of more than half a million birds; it is also one of the most commercialized. The noise from these black-and-white Magellanic penguins is immense; it’s quite an experience to wander around this scrubland avian metropolis amid a cacophony of braying, surrounded on all sides by waddling, tottering birds. The penguins nest behind the stony beach in scrapes underneath the bushes, with a close eye on approaching strangers. Get too close and they’ll indicate their displeasure by hissing or bobbing their heads from side to side like a dashboard dog – respect these warning signals, and remember that a penguin can inflict a good deal of pain with its sharp bill.

Late November to January is probably the best time to visit, as there are plenty of young chicks. The penguins are most active in the morning and early evening; tour agencies run morning trips from Trelew, allowing around one and a half hours with the birds. The nearby countryside is an excellent place to see terrestrial wildlife, such as guanacos, choiques, skunks, armadillos and maras.

The Magellanic penguin

The word “penguin”, some maintain, derives from Welsh pen gwyn (white head), a name allegedly bestowed by a Welsh sailor passing these shores with Thomas Cavendish in the sixteenth century. In fact, Magellanic penguins don’t have white heads and it’s far more likely that the name comes from the archaic Spanish pingüe, or fat. The birds were a gift to the early mariners, being the nearest equivalent at that time to a TV dinner.

Though they’re not exactly nimble on land, in water these birds can keep up a steady 8km an hour, or several times that over short bursts. An adult bird stands 50 to 60cm tall and weighs a plump 4–5.5kg. Birds begin arriving at their ancestral Patagonian nesting sites – which can be up to 1km from the sea – from late August, and by early October nesting is in full swing. Parents share the task of incubation, as they do the feeding of the brood once the eggs start to hatch, in early November. By early January, chicks that have not been preyed upon by sea birds, foxes or armadillos make their first sorties into the water. During the twenty-day February moult, the birds do not swim, as they lose their protective layer of waterproof insulation; at this time, penguin sites are awash with fuzzy down and sneezing birds. In March and April, they begin to vacate the nesting sites. Although little is known of their habits while at sea, scientists do know that the birds migrate north, reaching as far as the coast off Río de Janeíro, 3000km away.

Río Gallegos

With its harsh climate and no-nonsense commercial feel, provincial capital Río Gallegos – 246km south of Piedra Buena – is not the kind of place where you’ll want to stay for long, though there are a couple of museums and some attractive early twentieth-century buildings. It is, however, an important transport hub and many travellers pass through en route to or from El Calafate or Tierra del Fuego. The city’s namesake river is also a top fly-fishing spot, with some of the world’s biggest brown trout.

Parque Nacional Los Glaciares

Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981, the wild expanse of Parque Nacional Los Glaciares is a huge chunk of magical terrain shoved up against the Andes in the southwest corner of Santa Cruz Province. It encompasses a range of contrasting environments from enormous glaciers that ooze down from the heights of the gigantic Hielo Continental Sur icecap to thick, sub-Antarctic woodland of deciduous lenga and ñire, and evergreen guindo and canelo; and from savage, rain-lashed, unclimbed crags to dry, billiard-table Patagonian meseta stretching as far as the eye can strain. Most people will visit only the two sightseeing areas: the southern sector, around Glaciar Perito Moreno, one of the planet’s most famous glaciers; and the Fitz Roy sector in the north for its superb trekking. Serving as bases for these two areas are, respectively, the towns of El Calafate, in the south, and El Chaltén, in the north, both lying just outside the boundary of the park itself, but catering well to a burgeoning influx of outdoor enthusiasts from across the world.

El Chaltén

El Chaltén, 90km west of the RN-40 and 220km north of El Calafate, has undergone a convulsive expansion since it was established in 1985 in a (successful) attempt to claim the area from Chile. Today, it’s a thriving tourist centre showing regrettable signs of uncontrolled development: whereas some hotels have been built in a style sympathetic to their surroundings, others would look more at ease in the beach resort of Mar del Plata. That said, the atmosphere in the town is extremely pleasant and relaxed, with a friendly mix of Argentines and foreign visitors of all ages.

Rearing up on the opposite bank of the Río de las Vueltas is the curiously stepped, dark-grey cliff face of Cerro Pirámide, while you can glimpse the tips of the park’s most daunting peaks, Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre, from the southern and eastern fringes of the village. In terms of specific sights, there is only the classically uncluttered alpine chapel on the western edge of the village. Built by Austrian craftsmen with Austrian materials, it’s a fitting memorial to the climbing purist Toni Egger, as well as to others who have lost their lives in the park.

The northern sector of the park

The northern sector of Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, the Fitz Roy sector, is a trekking paradise. One of its main attractions is that those with limited time, or who are not in peak fitness, can still make worthwhile day-hikes using El Chaltén as a base.

The sector also contains some of the most breathtakingly beautiful mountain peaks on Earth. Two concentric jaws of jagged teeth puncture the Patagonian sky with the 3405m incisor of Monte Fitz Roy at the centre of the massif. This sculpted peak was known to the Tehuelche as El Chaltén, “The Mountain that Smokes” or “The Volcano”, owing to the almost perpetual presence of a scarf of cloud attached to its summit. It is not inconceivable, however, that the Tehuelche were using the term in a rather more metaphorical sense to allude to the fiery pink colour that the rock walls turn when struck by the first light of dawn. Francisco Moreno saw fit to name the pagan summit after the evangelical captain of the Beagle, who, with Charles Darwin, had viewed the Andes from a distance, after having journeyed up the Río Santa Cruz by whaleboat to within 50km of Lago Argentino. Alongside Monte Fitz Roy rise Cerro Poincenot and Aguja Saint-Exupéry, while set behind them is the forbidding needle of Cerro Torre, a finger that stands in bold defiance of all the elements that the Hielo Continental Sur hurls against it.

For those who enjoy camping, the quintessential three-day Fitz Roy/Cerro Torre loop at the centre of the park makes a good option, and can be done in either direction. The advantage of going anticlockwise is that you avoid the steep climb up to Lagunas Madre y Hija and you have the prevailing wind behind you when returning to El Chaltén. However, the biggest gamble is always what the weather will be like around Cerro Torre, so if this unpredictable peak is visible on day one, you might like to head for it first. The longer interlocking circuit to the north will add at least another two days. There are also many other shorter trails.

The Hielo Continental Sur

Blanketing massive expanses of Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, the Hielo Continental Sur (Southern Patagonian Icecap) is the largest body of ice outside the poles. Estimates vary as to exactly how big it is but most studies put the figure at around 17,000 square kilometres, some seventy percent of which is in neighbouring Chile. What is certain is that it is suffering from the effects of global warming. In 2003, Science Magazine published a report claiming over 16 cubic kilometres of ice was melting annually; Greenpeace puts the figure at 42 cubic kilometres annually, or “enough to fill 10,000 large football stadiums”.

The southern sector of the park

The exalted glaciers in the southern sector of the Los Glaciares national park attract huge numbers of visitors from all over the world and it takes a bit of planning to find the magic and avoid the crowds. The main sites cluster around Lago Argentino, the largest of all exclusively Argentine lakes, and the third biggest in all South America, with a surface area of 1600 square kilometres.

The three hotspots in the southern sector of the park are: the easy-to-reach and not-to-be-missed Glaciar Perito Moreno, which slams into the western end of the Península de Magallanes; Puerto Bandera, from where boat trips depart to Glaciar Upsala and the other northern glaciers that are inaccessible by land; and, to the south down the RP-15, the much-less-visited Lago Roca and the southern arm of Lago Argentino, the Brazo Sur.

Within the boundaries, be especially aware of the dangers of fire – an area of forest near Glaciar Spegazzini that burnt in the 1930s still hasn’t even remotely recovered. Mammals in the park include the gato montés wildcat, pumas and the endangered huemul, although you are highly unlikely to see any of these owing to their scarcity and elusive nature. There is plenty of enjoyable flora on display, though, such as the ubiquitous notro (Embothrium coccineum, known in English as the Chilean firebush or firetree), with its flaming red blooms between November and March. Commonly seen birds include the majestic black and red Magellanic woodpecker (Carpintero patagónico).

Glaciar Perito Moreno

The immense pack ice of the Glaciar Perito Moreno (also called Ventisquero Perito Moreno) is one of Argentina’s greatest natural wonders. It’s not the longest of Argentina’s glaciers – nearby Glaciar Upsala is twice as long (60km) – and whereas the ice cliffs at its snout tower up to 60m high, the face of Glaciar Spegazzini can reach heights double that. However, such comparisons prove irrelevant when you stand on the boardwalks that face this monster. Perito Moreno has a star quality that none of the others rivals.

The glacier zooms down off the icecap in a great motorway-like sweep, a jagged mass of crevasses and towering, knife-edged séracs almost unsullied by the streaks of dirty moraine that discolour many of its counterparts. When it collides with the southern arm of Lago Argentino, the Canal de los Témpanos (Iceberg Channel), the show really begins: vast blocks of ice, some weighing hundreds of tonnes, detonate off the face of the glacier with the report of a small cannon and come crashing down into the waters below. These frozen depth-charges then surge back to the surface as icebergs, sending out a fairy ring of smaller lumps that form a protecting reef around the berg, which is left to float in a mirror-smooth pool of its own.

That said, it’s more likely you’ll have to content yourself with the thuds, cracks, creaks and grinding crunches the glacier habitually makes, as well as the wonderful variety of colours of the ice: marbled in places with streaks of muddy grey and copper-sulphate blue, while at the bottom the pressurized, de-oxygenated ice has a deep blue, waxy sheen. The glacier tends to be more active in sunny weather and in the afternoon, but early morning can also be beautiful, as the sun strikes the ice cliffs.

With the wind coming off the ice, the temperature at the glacier can be a lot colder than in El Calafate, so take extra clothes. Do not stray from the boardwalks: many deaths have been caused by ricocheting ice or wave surges.

The RN-40 and the Cordillera

The western boundary of Argentine Patagonia and the border with Chile are formed by the southern reaches of the Cordillera de los Andes, the world’s longest mountain chain. These peaks are the feature that draws most visitors here, luring them along with a ring of beautiful lakes and a national park, albeit not as famous or as breathtaking as Los Glaciares. The nationally renowned RN-40 (often simply called “La Cuarenta”) zigzags up this mountainside swathe of inland Patagonia; indeed it hugs the Andes all the way from the southern tip of the mainland to the Bolivian border in the far north. Most access roads for visiting the region run west from the RN-40: to the wild trekking areas around lakes Posadas and Pueyrredón and into Parque Nacional Perito Moreno. The main exceptions are the major archeological site of the Cueva de las Manos Pintadas in the canyon of Río de las Pinturas, just east of the RN-40; and the oasis town of Sarmiento, a very useful stopover for anyone travelling farther up to the Lake District.

The region’s scenery is predominately dry and flat, though some slopes are densely cloaked in southern beech woods, with a narrow fringe of scrubland separating forest from steppe. It’s in these areas that you stand your best chance of seeing the area’s outstanding fauna: condors, and perhaps even a puma or huemul. As for flora, the brush looks dreary and anonymous for most of the year. Some bushes liven up considerably in the spring, however, not least the thorny calafate, which blooms with a profusion of yellow flowers, and the lengua de fuego with its gloriously bright orange flowers like clam shells. The RN-40 also passes harsh meseta, rocky outcrops, patches of desert and the occasional river valley, usually accompanied by boggy pasture and lined in places with willow and poplar. Here you’ll find the few people who live along the route, where old traditions and an unhurried pace still reign.

Bosque Petrificado Sarmiento

The Bosque Petrificado Sarmiento is home to perfectly preserved 65-million-year-old tree trunks, randomly strewn across a near-lunar setting with a stunning purple-and-orange cliff backdrop. Formed by mineral-rich water permeating the wood over hundreds of thousands of years, effectively turning the trees into stone, the petrified forest has parallels with the Monumento Natural Bosques Petrificados, but its bands of “painted desert” soils are more striking and erosion processes are much more visible here. Traversing the 2km circuit is rather like walking around a sawmill, the ground covered by splinters of bark and rotten wood that chink under foot, except that these woodchips are Mesozoic. The highlight is a famous and much-photographed chunk of hollow fossilized log that looks like nature’s take on a giant drainage pipe.

Take water, sunscreen and hats as the sun can be very strong, as can the winds. There are toilets in the park, but no other services.

Lago Posadas

Do not try to drive around the south shore of Lago Posadas, even though a road is marked on many maps: cars can easily get bogged down near the Río Furioso. Instead, take the route running around the north shore, which passes through a zone of blasted, bare humps, crisscrossed by lines of duraznillo bushes. Known as El Quemado (The Burnt One), it’s one of the most ancient formations in Argentina, dating back 180 million years to the Jurassic Age, and there are spectacular contrasts between minerals such as green olivina sandstone and porphyry iron oxides.

Lago Pueyrredón and the Río Oro

Ambitious engineers have somehow managed to squeeze a dirt road between the southern shore of pristinely beautiful Lago Pueyrredón and the hills that press up against it, without having to resort to tiresome infill projects. This precarious arrangement is compromised only by the occasional spring flood (September is the worst month).

Just past the neat bridge over the Río Oro, a track wends its way up the mountainside and past the magnificent purple chasm of the Garganta del Río Oro.

Parque Nacional Perito Moreno

Extreme isolation means that, despite being one of Argentina’s first national parks to be created, the Parque Nacional Perito Moreno is also one of its least visited. Though replete with glorious mountains and beautiful lakes, this is not a “sightseeing” park like Nahuel Huapi or Los Glaciares. The bulk of the park’s forested mountain scenery lies in its western two-thirds, which are reserved for scientific study, meaning that most of the area accessible to the public consists of arid steppe. Although visitor numbers are slowly increasing, the park still offers a solitude that few other places can match.

You can see much of the park by car in a day or two, but could equally spend much longer trekking through the starkly beautiful high pampas, past virulently colourful lakes and near the imperious snowcapped hulk of San Lorenzo – and still miss out on many of its hidden wonders. In the absence of humans, wildlife thrives here. Guanacos can be seen at close quarters, while the luckiest visitors may glimpse a puma (or at least its tracks) or an endangered huemul, of which about one hundred are thought to live in the park. Condors are plentiful as is other birdlife including the Chilean flamingo, Black-necked swan and the powerful black-chested Buzzard eagle (águila mora). One of the park’s most biologically interesting features is its lakes: the ones here have never been stocked with non-endemic species – native fish are protected and no fishing is allowed.

Perito Moreno

With a little over four thousand inhabitants, Perito Moreno is the biggest town in this part of the world, which shows just how thinly populated the region is. Lying 130km north of Bajo Caracoles, it’s a typically featureless, spread-out Patagonian settlement whose main point of interest is as a base for excursions to places such as the Cueva de las Manos Pintadas, some 120km south. When there is enough water, Black-necked swans and flamingoes pass their time at the free wildlife refuge in town, the Laguna de los Cisnes.

Cueva de las Manos Pintadas

The landscape between Perito Moreno and Bajo Caracoles best embodies most people’s concept of Patagonia – sparsely populated and at times empty lands stretching to the horizon. Why most people venture to these parts at all is to see the magnificent Cueva de las Manos Pintadas (Cave of the Painted Hands), one of South America’s finest examples of rock paintings and listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It can be approached either by road along a sidetrack just north of Bajo Caracoles, or, better, by walking or riding up the canyon it overlooks, the impressive Cañón de Río Pinturas.

From the canyon rim, it’s a spectacular two-hour walk to the cave paintings. The path drops sharply to the flat valley bed, and continues to the right of the snaking river, nestling up against rock walls and pinnacles that display the region’s geological history in bands of black basalt, slabs of rust-coloured sandstone and a layer of sedimentary rocks that range in hue from chalky white to mottled ochre. Bring binoculars for viewing the finches and birds of prey that inhabit the canyon, plus food, water, a hat and sunscreen.

At the point where the course of the Río Pinturas is diverted by a vast rampart of red sandstone, you start to climb the valley side again to reach the road from Bajo Caracoles and the entrance building to the protected area around the paintings, where there’s a modest display. Unfortunately, some parts of the site have been tarnished by tourists etching modern graffiti on the rock – hence the fence that now keeps visitors at a distance – and you can only access the cave accompanied by a guardaparque on a one-hour guided walk.

The cueva itself is less a cave than a series of overhangs: natural cutaways at the foot of a towering 90m cliff face overlooking the canyon below, a vantage point from which groups of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers would survey the valley floor for game. Despite the rather heavy-handed fence that now frames them, the collage of black, white, red and ochre handprints, mixed with gracefully flowing vignettes of guanaco hunts, still makes for an astonishing spectacle. Of the 829 handprints, most are male, and only 31 are right-handed. They are all “negatives”, being made by placing the hand on the rock face, and imprinting its outline by blowing pigments through a tube. Interspersed with these are human figures, as well as the outlines of puma paws and rhea prints, and creatures such as a scorpion.

Posadas

The village of Posadas is a loosely grouped assemblage of modern houses, and is listed on some maps as Hipólito Yrigoyen (or even, confusingly, as Lago Posadas), but locals use the old name of Posadas.

The village can used as a base for visiting the turquoise Lago Posadas, and the stunning lapis lazuli Lago Pueyrredón, set among splendid landscapes and famed for their fishing. The lakes are separated by the narrowest of strips of land, the arrow-straight La Península, which looks for all the world like a man-made causeway. It was actually formed during a static phase of the last Ice Age, when an otherwise retreating glacier left an intermediate dump of moraine, now covered by sand dunes, which cut shallow Lago Posadas off from its grander neighbour. Most places of interest around the lakes are accessible only to those with their own vehicle.

Cerro de los Indios

Three kilometres south of Posadas, the low, rounded wedge of Cerro de los Indios lies beneath the higher scarp of the valley. Bruce Chatwin’s description of this rock in In Patagonia is unerring: “…a lump of basalt, flecked red and green, smooth as patinated bronze and fracturing in linear slabs. The Indians had chosen the place with an unfaltering eye for the sacred.”

Indigenous rock-paintings, some almost 10,000 years old, mark the foot of the cliff, about two-thirds of the way along the rock to the left. The well-known depiction of a “unicorn” – now thought to be a huemul – is rather faded; more impressive are the wonderful concentric circles of a hypnotic labyrinth design. The red blotches high up on the overhangs appear to have been the result of guanaco hunters firing up arrows tipped in pigment-stained fabric, perhaps in an ancient version of darts. However, the site’s most remarkable feature is the polished shine on the rocks, which really do possess the patina and texture of antique bronze. There’s also no fence screening off the engravings and paintings here, leaving the site’s magical aura uncompromised.