Patagonia
Exceptional holidays, beautifully local & certifiably responsible
Patagonia
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 | Road journeys |
Carretera Austral; Ruta 40
 | Highlights |
Torres del Paine; Perito Moreno Glacier; Mount Fitz Roy; Lake District; Cape Horn; Bahia Bustamante; Parque Patagonia; Chiloé; General Carrera Lake
 | Major airports |
Puerto Montt; Coyhaique; Punta Arenas (all Chile); Bariloche; Trelew; El Calafate; Ushuaia (all Argentina)
Arriving Sunrise over the Torres Charm of Chaltén A Patagonian feast Putting the camera down Patagonia provisions Maté mates Capturing condors Starry skies Cloudwatching Howling kids Luxury of time
From El Chaltén, Argentina
It's a long drive from Punta Arenas in Chile, over the border and along long tracts of unsurfaced remoteness in the wilds of Patagonia.
But the final hour was utterly delightful - smooth, straight, empty roads, sometimes pointing right at our target. Mount Fitz Roy is the tallest, most obvious peak, Cerro Torre the more slender tower to the left of the road. And you can’t tell from the photo, but it’s blowing an absolute gale out there.
From Torres del Paine, Chile
The first rays of direct sunlight hit the top of the towers, turning them the most exquisite rich orange-pink colour. It was not that the sky became bright, rather the mountains were being set alight.
Bit by bit the light flowed down the sheer rock face until all of the towers glowed, then the snow field at the foot of the cliffs, then the surrounding peaks. It just kept on coming, each precious, privileged minute adding to the one before.
From El Chaltén, Argentina
20 years ago, Chaltén was a one-street village. No hotel, just hostals for climbers. The road to Calafate was unpaved. To buy bread, I had to walk down the street and shout ‘pan’. It rained, properly rained, so I spent the time holed up in the only café, playing cards and making friends.
Chaltén is bigger now, with 5-star hotels, a bus station and a shiny visitor centre. But it retains its character. And the café is still there!
From Carretera Austral, Chile
The lamb that we saw heading into the wood burner earlier was nearly ready. We noticed Sebastian taking an active role in getting lunch ready and learned this isn’t usual for a gaucho. Though by then, we’d already gathered he's not your average gaucho.
Lunch was the freshly baked bread, the best roast lamb in the world, potatoes and salad leaves grown by our guide that he’d brought along with a glass of Chilean red.
From El Calafate, Argentina
Watching the glacier is like experiencing a thunderstorm. But instead of a great bolt of lightning, followed by furious thunder, the rumble comes first. The difficult thing is swivelling the camera to capture the great chunks of calving ice before it all disappears into the lake.
In the end I had to do something I seldom do; take my finger off the shutter and just watch. That’s about the best compliment I can pay the glacier.
From Carretera Austral, Chile
It's not every night you sleep next to a glacier on a private boat, kitted out by the craftsmen of Chiloé, is it? Which is just as well, it's a long way to the nearest supermarket.
No matter, our host Noel had all he needed for a delicious dinner. And it’s not scientifically proven but I believe pisco sours taste better over ice freshly hooked out of the water and coffee tastes better looking out over a fjord.
From Ruta 40, Argentina
My first ever lesson on tea-drinking etiquette? In a tent buffeted by fierce winds in the heart of Patagonia. My teachers - a pair of mountain guides.
Maté is a shared ritual that has some opaque rules, but our guides happily inducted us in the art of drinking maté like a local. Maybe it was the warmth of the liquid after a long day of walking, oe the sense of companionship, but it was comforting to find this in such a wild and unfamiliar place.
From Carretera Austral, Chile
Bad lighting, wrong shutter speed wrong, finger over the lens... I had given up hope of capturing a condor. On the last day, I was snapping away at the Marble Caves, when there was a call: "CONDOR!!!".
Last chance. I adjusted the shutter speed, zoomed out just as it came into shot, fired the shutter twice and crossed my fingers. Another fail. But the next shot, against a beautiful blue backdrop, was a condor gliding with its full wingspan.
From Torres del Paine, Chile
One cold evening I went out to brush my teeth, standing on the lakeshore. I remember the sound of the water lapping. And I remember looking up to see the most extraordinary blanket of stars in the unusually clear night sky.
The Milky Way was a clear brush stroke sweeping across the sky above. It is the only time in my life that I have actually ducked my head looking at stars - I thought I was going to be squashed.
From El Chaltén, Argentina
They rarely put these in the brochure or eulogise about them in guide books, but boy do they had an extra layer of drama and beauty to the already epic Patagonian landscape.
Whipped into weird and wonderful shapes by the famously fierce Patagonian wind, they hang majestically, often ominously in the sky, embodying the enormity and rawness of this special region.
From Carretera Austral, Chile
My son howled in and out of the freezing water. My daughter built castles by the shore and drew driftwood patterns on the beach. My wife laid out a picnic of empanadas and fresh fruit on the sand.
I remember and taking it all in. I remember realising that I would remember this for the rest of my life, living it in the moment, but also seeing it from the far distant future too, when sandcastles and howling kids were long gone.
From Cape Horn, Chile
In 25 years of travelling to Patagonia, I'd never been south of the Beagle Channel. Now, I was sailing all the way down to Cape Horn.
The last stop was at the Pia Glacier and a walk to the top of the hill produced an incredible view of the icefield stretching out over the mountains. It was such a gift to have the time to sit and soak it all in, and give my feet a dose of Patagonian air. Watching a glacier never gets old.
From timing the iconic sights right, to sharing the hidden highlights you might never have heard of, we've spent 20 years revealing Patagonia at its pristine, personal and peaceful best.
- Trip ideas to Patagonia
- Patagonia Photo Journey
- Best times to visit Patagonia
- Patagonia Travel Guide
Route of Parks
Chile’s Route of Parks links 17 national parks across 2,800km of Patagonia, from the Lake District to legendary Cape Horn, via the remote beauty of the Carretera Austral, the twisting glaciers of the icefields and the mountains of Torres del Paine...
The Route of Parks is a celebration of Chilean Patagonia in all its unspoilt glory, protected and preserved through conservation as a consequence of tourism.
From the herds of guanaco grazing the open grasslands, to the predatory pumas which follow in their wake, and from the slow growing ancient alerce trees, to the woodpeckers, hummingbirds and hued hueds which live in the cool rainforests, Patagonia is a wilder place thanks to the world’s most ambitious conservation project.
While the numbers are impressive and the scale mind-boggling, as its heart, this great feat is the culmination of 25 years of dedication on the part of pioneering conservationists Kristine and Douglas Tompkins, to take ecologically critical land from absentee landowners, restore its ecosystems and give it all in perpetuity to the people of Chile as protected parkland.
Despite fierce opposition along the way, their efforts came to fruition with the largest private land donation to a government in history. Together with federal land, they created five new national parks and expanded three others, forming the centrepieces of the Route of Parks.
So where do we fit into this story?
If what you value in your travels is the chance to explore remote areas of beauty in a way that preserves, rather than exploits, the environment and the opportunity to connect with and directly benefit the local communities through which you pass, then we can offer no greater validation of our credentials than by our standing shoulder to shoulder with one of the world’s great conservation through tourism initiatives.
Central to Pura Aventura’s ethos is a duty to protect and benefit the fragile destinations we work with. And Chilean Patagonia was also where the seeds for Pura Aventura were sown over 20 years ago. So the Route couldn’t be closer to our hearts.
It was therefore with immense pride that we hosted the official European launch of the Route of Parks in September 2019, welcoming Kristine Tompkins to London to discuss her decades of conservation work and help us celebrate two decades of thoughtfully tailoring travel to this beautiful part of the world.
We would love to share it all with you.
Route of Parks: Our Ultimate Patagonia Journey
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£14,950 ppn/a
- 41 days
Route of Parks: Our Ultimate Patagonia Journey
When: Oct-Apr
Price: £13,650 per person
Duration: 41 days
A road trip weaving through the Andes; walking in Torres del Paine and Fitz Roy; a voyage through fjords to Cape Horn - this is epic Patagonia, no compromises.
Great Road Trips: Patagonia's Carretera Austral
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£6,285 pp$8,600 pp€7,200 ppn/a
- 22 days
Great Road Trips: Patagonia's Carretera Austral
When: Oct-Apr
Price: £6,570 per person
Duration: 22 days
From rainforests to the icefields, this is Patagonia is at its untamed best. Enjoy cosy lodges, stellar walks and exclusive experiences along a road less travelled.
Travel Positive with Pura Aventura
Exceptional holidays in exceptional places.
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