Patagonia is mythical, a place of exquisite dream-scape that seems to exist more in the exotic fantasy of imagination as in reality. And that aspect alone makes a trip there feel momentous. One view of the incredible surreal landscape there explains it all, even if you have to pinch yourself. This is the sort of place that seems to come right out of a sci-fi movie. Mountains of incredible jagged peaks, surrounded by a base matrix of wheaten pampas, blue-crystal lakes, and amazing flora and fauna, the type not seen anywhere else on this planet.
In a globally reduced world, where your neighbor visits Nepal, and a friend has just returned from Tahiti, Patagonia still rises above the rarest of expectation, and literally so. Patagonia has somehow retained the mystique of the frontier. The name alone conjures images of a fabled landscape of spiky peaks veiled in clouds, glaciers that extend to the horizon tumbling into electric-vibrant lakes, endless flowing steppes unpopulated for hundreds of miles save for the herds of llama and wandering puma. And it puts you in a mood of wonder and amazement that is vibrantly luminous in the sheer & vast enormity of physical space. Patagonia covers about 260,000 square miles in size, about the same as Texas, spanning a significant portion of lower South America.
And while few places, including Patagonia are no longer uncharted territory, Los Torres del Paine and the surrounding Andes are as close as one comes in the new millennia, to being truly pristine areas of open untouched majesty. For years Patagonia has been on the map of hardy international trekkers, who have found there some of the world’s best unspoiled scenery, and found solace in the solitary existence of some of nature’s finest artistry.
I first saw the sheer granite towers of Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park in National Geographic 2 decades ago. Literally stunned at the incredible jagged landscape, I promised myself I would go there one day. I kept that promise in March, 2002. I made another promise when I left…and that was to return one day.
Torres del Paine National Park is an amazing array of lakes, waterfalls, glaciers and jagged peaks at the bottom tip of South America. Its massive 1,000 square mile, 500,000-acre expanse runs from just north of Tierra del Fuego and curls around the Sound of Last Hope in southern Patagonia, Chile. The crowning jewel and namesake of the park are three incredible 9,000-foot violet-pink granite monoliths.
Those looking for dramatic alpine landscapes, glacial fields, astonishing, jagged mountainscapes and a chance to get a look at the stunning spires of pink granite that make the famous towers of Paine are drawn from all over the globe to experience firsthand the wonders of the Torres del Paine circuit in Chile’s Patagonia mountains. It is no surprise, to those that have been there, including this writer, that Torres del Paine has been names one of the ‘Nat-Geo Top Ten’ places to visit in your lifetime by National Geographic. It is also, thankfully, a UNESCO biosphere protected reserve, specifically because of the extraordinarily uniqueness of place: the mountain vistas, pristine valleys, rolling pampas, crystal glacial lakes and its unique wildlife.
A Place Not of this World
I have been fortunate to circumnavigate the world many times over the past 3 decades. I am often asked what place is my favorite. It’s a difficult question, and in many ways, one I truly cannot answer. It unfair to the numerous amazing places, that all stand out in their own merits, for vastly differing reasons. But within the prodigious expanse of Patagonia, Los Torres del Paine is utterly unique, beautiful beyond imagination. And perhaps it is the immensity of limitlessness, this sense of infinite that embellishes the sense of the mystical within Los Torres del Paine. Truly it looks & feels different, a place not of this world.