Thirty years ago, the seaside town of Puerto Natales didn’t have a single traffic light, but it was already the gateway to Torres del Paine – even though many of those on a Patagonia expedition were shoestring backpackers who thumbed their way to Chile’s most famous national park. Most of them stayed in town only […]

When I first saw Ushuaia, in the summer of 1979, not many foreign visitors were enjoying Patagonia adventure cruises there. Argentine and Chile had only recently avoided war over several small islands in the famous Beagle Channel and, in a seaside city with only about 11,000 inhabitants – it has more than five times that […]

One highlight of any expedition cruise to Patagonia is wildlife-watching. South America’s best-known beast is probably the camel-like llama, but that’s a domestic animal most common in the central Andean countries of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. In Patagonia, though, the rangy wild guanaco – a close relative to the llama – is a common sight […]

Food is an important part of any Patagonia excursion, as I recently wrote in describing the one such dining option in Buenos Aires. It’s worth noting that, before or after heading to Patagonia, Chile’s capital of Santiago has similar options, as I found in one recent lunch in the city’s increasingly fashionable Barrio Lastarria neighborhood. […]