our Patagonia

Chris Moss: "'Bienvenido a la Patagonia', says the sign at Balmaceda airport in Chile. There’s something stirring about being welcomed not to a nation or a city but to a landscape of the imagination, a site of myth-laden memoirs and storied exploration, a region where Darwin and FitzRoy, W H Hudson and the Welsh settlers, St Exupéry and Bruce Chatwin all experienced life-changing journeys.

"No one agrees exactly where the fertile pampas end and arid Patagonia begins, but for most people the northern border is the Río Colorado. That’s on the Argentine side. In Chile, it’s much lower, probably around the island of Chiloé, where the lake district peters out and the jagged coast of Palena begins."