Category: Epic Adventures

Torres del Paine National Park is full of truly extraordinary landscapes, from its immense granite towers to the hulking mass of the Paine Massif itself. But in six seasons of working in the park as a guide and hiking the W Trek more times than I care to remember, there was one place that I […]

Chile’s Atacama Desert is, by some measures, the driest place on Earth. The salty earth here bumps up against an amphitheatre of camel-coloured hills and the ground has the texture of burnt pizza crust, cracking under the pressure of your boots. The air feels as if it’s whooshed in from some giant unseen hair dryer. […]

Any traveller to Argentinian Patagonia quickly becomes familiar with the name Perito Moreno. It’s the name of one of the region’s most celebrated landmarks, the epic Perito Moreno Glacier in Los Glaciares National Park, which can be explored in a host of ways, from boat trips along its frozen cliffs to ice-hiking on its back. […]

Patagonia has no shortage of incredible scenery. From the volcano-dotted landscapes of Chile and Argentina’s Lake Districts, the spine of the Andes mountains with its glaciers, ancient forests and crinkled fjords, to the wild coastline at the southernmost tip of the Americas, this is a region made for adventure travel.  But which are the best […]

The ship had barely pulled out of Punta Arenas when the talk turned to Cape Horn. Would we really get there? It felt like a mythical place, all treacherous weather and shipwrecks. Not quite the southernmost tip of the world when you look at the map, but definitely the most extreme in my imagination. It […]

Note: This article was updated on 14 November 2024 In July 2024, Chilean authorities announced that the Las Guardas Bridge, a key crossing point along the O Circuit trail in Torres del Paine National Park, had been seriously damaged by winter avalanches. We are pleased to announce that thanks to the support of Swoop customers, […]

The trees outside my window were bent double by the wind, a permanent reminder of what a tough place Patagonia can sometimes be to make a home. I was on Navarino Island in Chilean Tierra del Fuego, and I was waiting to see the dentist.  Not just any dentist – my teeth were actually just […]

There’s a common idea that a meal at the best restaurants should come with a side order of drama. Dinner served up from a theatrically pretentious menu perhaps, or from a red-faced celebrity chef shouting orders at his harassed crew. They certainly don’t come from a remote cabin that looks like a fisherman’s shack and […]