The Best of Wanderlust (A GeoEx eBook)

The Best of Wanderlust

PATAGONIA: MIRROR IMAGE, WITH PENGUINS Tim Cahi l l

T he single question a travel writer most often hears is: What is your favorite destination? I think most of us who deal with the question as a matter of course have formulated some easy answer. I generally say something like, “Well, it’s like asking about a favorite meal. It’s hard to specify. Sometimes only a greasy burger will do; sometimes it’s got to be pheasant under glass.” Except when Don George asks you, he keeps poking until he gets an answer. So, yes, Don, my favorite place on earth, aside from where I live, is Patagonia, by which I mean the southern cone of South America, which includes parts of Chile and Argentina. (There are more exact definitions, but when people say Patagonia—unless they’re some fussy geographer—that’s what they mean.) I like Patagonia because it is big and lonely and flat and windswept and barren, except where it is big and mountainous with glaciers glittering against a pale blue sky, or where it is green and grassy with tidewater glaciers dropping through the greenery into the sea. The places I like best are the parts of Patagonia that have contrived to be very much like the place where I live, in

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