Patagonia Region Guide

Patagonia is emptiness on a scale that is difficult to convey — roughly a third of Argentina holding about five per cent of its people — and it contains some of the most dramatic landscape in the Americas.

The Perito Moreno glacier is the headline: a wall of ice five kilometres wide and sixty metres high that advances daily and calves blocks the size of buildings into the lake in front of a walkway. Unusually among the world’s glaciers it is not retreating.

Behind it, Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre rise as sheer granite spires above El Chalten, and the walking there is among the best anywhere.

On the Atlantic side, Peninsula Valdes gathers southern right whales, orcas that beach themselves to take sea lions, and colonies of penguins and elephant seals.

And at the far south, Ushuaia calls itself the city at the end of the world, which is close enough to true.

The glaciers

El Calafate as a base for Perito Moreno, where a system of walkways lets you stand opposite the ice face for hours and watch it calve. Boat trips get closer, and guided ice treks walk on the glacier itself. Upsala and Spegazzini are reached by boat across Lago Argentino.

El Chalten

A village founded in 1985 and now Argentina’s trekking capital, with trails leaving from the streets. The walk to Laguna de los Tres beneath Fitz Roy takes a long day and is the classic; Laguna Torre is gentler. No permits, no fees, no huts to book.

Peninsula Valdes

From Puerto Madryn: southern right whales calving in the gulfs, elephant seals and sea lions on the beaches, orcas hunting in the shallows, and the Magellanic penguin colony at Punta Tombo, among the largest in the world.

The Lake District

Bariloche and the Nahuel Huapi park, the Seven Lakes road north to San Martin de los Andes, and skiing at Cerro Catedral in winter.

The far south

Ushuaia, the Beagle Channel, Tierra del Fuego national park, and departures for Antarctica.

Patagonia is a frontier that was settled recently and violently, and its culture reflects both.

Immigrant settlement

Almost everyone here arrived within the last century and a half. Welsh settlers founded a colony in the Chubut valley in 1865 seeking a place to keep their language, and their descendants still run Welsh-language chapels and tea houses at Gaiman and Trelew. Swiss, German and Italian immigrants shaped the Lake District, and Bariloche’s alpine architecture and chocolate industry come from them.

The Conquest of the Desert

The Argentine state took Patagonia from its indigenous peoples in a military campaign from 1878, killing or displacing the Mapuche and Tehuelche and distributing the land to a small number of owners. The Mapuche remain and their land claims are an active and often bitter political issue.

Sheep and estancias

Enormous sheep stations dominated the twentieth-century economy, many of them foreign-owned, and the 1921 strike by rural workers ended in mass executions that Patagonians have not forgotten.

Distance as a mentality

Patagonians identify strongly as such and regard Buenos Aires with some scepticism. Mate is drunk constantly, and hospitality in a place this empty is genuinely meant.

Distances are the environmental problem here. Patagonia is enormous and almost everything involves long drives or flights. Combining destinations rather than hopping, and using the long-distance buses, which are excellent, makes a real difference.

The glaciers are retreating almost everywhere except Perito Moreno, and the ice fields are among the fastest-thinning outside the poles. Guided ice walks are well run; choose operators who stick to permitted areas.

Wildlife viewing at Peninsula Valdes is regulated: minimum distances from whales, no swimming with them, and strict rules at the penguin and elephant seal colonies. The orca intentional stranding attacks happen on a few specific beaches and viewing is tightly controlled.

Fire is the great danger in the national parks. Camping stoves only, no open fires anywhere in Los Glaciares, and the 2011 and 2015 fires in the region destroyed forest that will take centuries.

Trekking: stay on trails, take everything out, and use the composting toilets.

December to February is the southern summer and the main season: long days — light until eleven at night in the far south — temperatures around 15 to 20°C, and everything open. It is also busy and expensive, and the wind is at its strongest.

November and March are the sweet spots: fewer people, less wind, and in March the beech forests turn red and gold, which is spectacular around El Chalten and Bariloche.

April to September is winter. Most trekking infrastructure in El Chalten closes, ferries reduce, and days are very short. Bariloche and Ushuaia, by contrast, come alive for the ski season from June to September.

Southern right whales are at Peninsula Valdes from June to December, peaking in September and October. Magellanic penguins are at Punta Tombo from September to March, and the orca strandings occur around March and April.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the region

Patagonia is the most expensive part of Argentina, and the internal flights are the cost that breaks budgets. Argentina’s currency situation changes rapidly — check how payment and exchange currently work before travelling.