Tag: Tierra del Fuego

When you visit a place that’s sometimes described as a new frontier in travel, it can sometimes be hard to know what to expect. You can look at an itinerary but struggle to conjure in your mind what you’ll be experiencing – not just the scenery and the views, but the feeling of the trail, […]

There are some trails that you know you want to walk as soon as you hear about them. For me, the Dientes de Navarino trek was definitely one. It wasn’t just the wildness of the name (dientes are teeth in Spanish, suggesting a certain jagged quality to its mountains) but its description: the southernmost trek […]

Ever wondered what it feels like to trek through Patagonia’s wild, untamed beauty? Whether you’re a seasoned hiker seeking your next big adventure or a first-timer eager to explore, Patagonia’s vast wilderness is waiting for you.  At Swoop, we’ve been walking Patagonia’s trails for years, and many of our team members have worked as guides […]

When it comes to Patagonia’s wildlife, people often talk about the ‘Big 5’: the puma, condor, guanaco, huemul deer and Darwin’s rhea. They’re all great to see of course, but there’s a certain degree of terrestrial bias when it comes to the list: they’re species you can see inland in one of the region’s great […]

Ushuaia on the southern tip of Argentina can feel like the last outpost of civilization. It’s somewhere that’s always embraced that image: tourist slogans reading ‘fin del mundo’ are everywhere, alongside street art showing convicts in stripy prison uniforms, remembering when this part of Tierra del Fuego was somewhere you were once sent as a […]

Birdwatching can take you to some unexpected places. I come from a family of birdwatchers and we’ve travelled the world with it, from the cloudforests of Costa Rica and the Australian Outback to the green hills of Sri Lanka. My most recent birdwatching experience was on an Antarctic expedition cruise, where icebergs offered a beautiful […]

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 […]

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 […]