GRASS ROUTES
You’ve been to Yendegaia?” Ricardo is looking at me and my friend and shaking his head in disbelief. Yes, he lives in southern Chile’s mind-bogglingly beautiful Aysén region – in a pristine valley where waterfalls stream into turquoise lagoons, with a glacier more or less at the bottom of his garden – but that doesn’t curb his wanderlust for the country’s furthest reaches. Everyone from naturalist Charles Darwin to bank robber Butch Cassidy and author Bruce Chatwin has done their bit to mythologise Patagonia over the centuries, firing up the imaginations of travellers the world over. And, even for those who live here, this immense wilderness at the foot of South America, shared between Chile and Argentina, holds untold mystery and magnetism. In this case, it’s a national park on the tip of the continent on a windswept archipelago called Tierra del Fuego that’s given Ricardo travel envy. It’s hard to reach, he says admiringly, and we were very lucky to go: “It’s the central point of the middle of nowhere.” An appropriately decalibrating spot to have started our journey, then, in a land where sunlight stretches deep into the night and even my iPhone doesn’t seem to know what time it is.
Four days earlier, we had followed a road that is still being built to get a glimpse of this park at the end of the world (or the end of Chile, at least – just a stone’s throw from Ushuaia, in Argentina, where expeditions leave for Antarctica). With snow-capped mountains and mossy green valleys cradling lakes of unbelievable blue, Yendegaia lies at the southern extremity of the Route of Parks of Patagonia: a 2800-kilometre scenic route that spans 17 national parks, integrating the Carretera Austral (Southern Highway) with the Patagonian Channels and the Ruta del Fin del Mundo (End of the World Route). Less a physical trail to travel from A to B and more a concept designed to inspire, the Route of Parks encompasses 11.5 million hectares of Patagonia’s diverse landscapes and ecosystems across three regions and invigorates more than 60 communities
