anna: Patagonia: A Place We Believe In

Overview of southern Patagonia, courtesy: Google earth

IT IS NOW ALMOST JUNE AND WINTER IN PATAGONIA, where we are headed, is in full swing. We will leave, Anna, in Ecuador for a while as we make our way to the southern tip of the Chilean/Argentinian Andes to visit the ice fields, glaciers, and imposing granite peaks of southern Patagonia. It suits us well to choose the off, off-season for this little adventure into the remote grandeur of Torres Del Paine (Chile) and Los Glaciares (Argentina) and surrounding areas. Our base camp will be mobile - an off-road 4x4 pick-up/camper, suitable for unpaved roads, snow, ice and sub-freezing conditions. Our intention is to trek the landscape during the short winter days and return in the evenings to our small, auxiliary-heated cabin on wheels. In reality, this isn't really very different from how we sail and live, in remote places. The transition for us should be smooth, at least in theory.

Overview of Torres Del Paine, southern Patagonia, courtesy: Google earth, sat image date: 4/9/2013

We have now been living in Latin America and the Tropics for about three years. And although we have gotten to know the places we have sailed to, pretty well, we have for the most part limited our overland, side-trip travelling. Partly because we truly enjoy the places and people where we drop our anchor, and don't feel the need to wander far from our landfalls. And partly because it can be incredibly expensive to travel overland these days, for an extended period of time, even in second and third world countries. But South America is a compelling place where we have the opportunity, now that we're here, to visit some truly extraordinary inland regions. And so we made an exception. We decided to explore a bit of this continent by land. This has, in fact, been our plan all along. It's just - surprisingly so - taken us three years to get here, by sail, from the Pacific Northwest.

Non-wintertime in southern Patagonia (photo source: unknown).

Another motivation for visiting southern Chile and Argentina, is that we wanted to do a little re-con. When Anna departs Ecuador we will have a decision to make regarding where we will sail to next. Southern Chile is one of the compelling options. But it can be a rather daunting place to get to, under sail, even in the best of conditions, and it can be equally challenging when it comes time to leave. Weather and sailing conditions can be fierce, at times. And so we don't make the decision to undertake this offshore passage, of over 4,000 nautical miles, lightly. Gleaning a little insight into this remote area of the world, in any way that we can (in this case, overland, during the winter) may help us in our decision-making process in the late fall, when we plan to depart from the relatively benign conditions of coastal Ecuador. Either way, whether we decide to sail Anna to the Patagonian channels, or not, we would opt to do the wintertime, overland segment that we are about to embark upon.

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Back in Canoa, a small Ecuadorian coastal town just a few miles north (and a $1 bus ride) from where we are anchored, we can stroll and relax at the beach, while we think about the desolation and biting cold of the Patagonia winter ahead.