Turning Back

It is a five hour drive from Torres del Paine south to the airport at Punta Arenas, the last town at the tip of the South American continent beyond which there is only the island of Tierra del Fuego, Cape Horn and Antartica.

Patagonia is a beautiful but desolate place with less than one human being per square kilometre (compared to more than 1700/sq km in London and more than 4000 in New York). Here the air is so clear that trees are covered in lichen which only grows where there is no pollution, the sun is strong because of the hole in the ozone layer and the wind whips of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, one of the remaining relics of the ice age.

It is strange to think that here - 53 degrees of latitude south - we are more or less the same distance from the equator as London yet the climate and land is so different.  It has been a real privilege to be here in both Argentina and Chile.

In some ways today is a turning point for us, the end of one long journey and the beginning of another.  For today, after five flights totalling over 22 hours of flying time and two five hour road trips, we complete the journey south from London to Punta Arenas. Now at the halfway point of our South American trip we turn back north starting with a flight to Puerto Montt in the Chilean lake district.