Category: Planning & Tips

The temperature hit me like a mugger carrying a hot wet towel. I had started my day taking breakfast nearly 1600 miles (2500 km) away on Argentina’s Patagonian Atlantic coast at Peninsula Valdes, where the morning sun came with the threat of a sharp wind off the sea. Now, as I stepped onto the scorchingly […]

I was having lunch at the Iceberg Lagoon when I realised just how different this trek was to what I’d anticipated. The setting was extraordinary: I was high in the mountains surrounded by a giant circle of rocky peaks, with the last patches of winter snow still tucked into their crevices. Between two of them […]

What lifts a place from the picturesque to the beautiful? And what is it about that place that makes a traveller want to grab a hashtag and start posting their pictures on Instagram? In recent years, travellers to Chile both on the road and online have been hearing a lot about the Marble Caves in […]

It’s something of a cliché to say that Patagonia is a destination for carnivores. If you think of Argentinian food, then the first thing you might have in mind is a big steak washed down with a glass of red wine. This is the land of the gaucho after all, where men on horseback have […]

Argentina’s Los Glaciares National Park has no shortage of brilliant places to stay, from luxury lodges to comfortably cool glamping opportunities. You can stay in a hotel in the centre of El Chaltén town and walk straight out of your door to join a mountain trail, or you can get close to nature by camping […]

Torres del Paine National Park in Chile is one of Patagonia’s great banner destinations, and its breathtaking granite towers offer up one of the region’s most iconic views. There are many ways to experience the park, its mountains and glaciers, but the classic way is to hike the multi-day W Trek,  At Swoop Patagonia, many […]

What happens when a place once overlooked by the world starts to be discovered by tourism?  That was the question I was asking when I recently travelled through the Aysen region of Chile.Those that have visited Aysen talk about it with a glint in their eye, like they’re letting you in on the world’s best […]

There are certain buzzwords that come up time and again when people start talking about Aysen in Chile: wilderness, untouched, epic and raw.  These are all great ways of describing the landscapes you can encounter in this little-visited part of Patagonia, but one thing they don’t capture is just how diverse this region is. Aysen […]