TRIP
HIGHLIGHTS!
¨ Drink
great Argentine
wines with the best fresh beef in the world
¨ Hike
to the Laguna de los
Tres and enjoy the incredible views of Mount Fitz Roy
¨ Feel
the vastness and the
power of nature while traveling in this fantastic part of the world
During
the
second half of the XIX century a considerable flow of emigrants ( or
rather
fugitives) started to move towards the uncharted and mysterious lands
of Patagonia
seeking for adventure and a stroke of luck. At
that time, Patagonia
was nobody’s land: or
better, it was considered as such by those who landed there. Actually,
it was
inhabited – although scarcely – by various tribes of natives (Indios).
Some
of the new pioneers – most
of the early
settlers alike – were ruthless: they started a methodical
massacre of the local
population, therefore contributing to the process of extinction which
nowadays
is nearly completed. The non sense is that some of them are now
considered
charitable heroes.
Some
others, instead, tried to establish a relationship aimed at
cohabitation
although they had always been considered foreigners in somebody
else’s land.
The land was (and still
is) so vast that
there were no major problems in
adaptation but the rough weather conditions together with many other circumstances ( including
political ones )
inevitably made a fierce selection among the newcomers: most of them
were
struck by despair more than by luck.
Only
a bunch of pioneers of an outstanding brightness and skill managed to settle in the
most secluded and hostile
areas where their presence didn’t affect the natives very
much. Although their
intervention in the local reality was remarkably scarce, their fate would have always been tied
to the Indios’
one, both in good and bad times.
These
men soon realized that if war had to be, it should have been against
nature, rough
weather, pumas, river
floods and above all loneliness and isolation. These elements were part
of the
Indios lot, were written in their genes unlike British, Germans,
Scandinavian
and Italians…..
Their
so called “philosophy” it’s shortly
described by a sentence of a Danish pioneer, Andreas Madsen:
“down
there I realized the dream of my childhood, the great wide open and
nobody’s
land”.
Difficulty and
environment
The
itinerary develops along trails in good condition and without
technical difficulty; there are also long bus transfers on dirt roads.
The most
“demanding” element is the weather one of oddest on
earth. This may be
one of the reasons why so many people
fall in love with this land that hardly indulges to the visitor. Walking hours are approximate
and do not include breaks.
