by Jim and Melanie
The region known as Patagonia includes the southern halves of Argentina and Chile. In late November, early winter in the northern hemisphere, we flew overnight from Dallas, TX in the US, directly to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to begin a 17 day journey of discovery in Patagonia.
We traveled within a tour group of 14 travelers, plus our group leader. Our group stayed two days in Buenos Aires, in the upper right corner of the map below, before flying southwest two hours to the popular vacation city of Bariloche. From there, our bus crossed the Chilean border to Puerto Varas, and we proceeded to Castro on Chiloe Island off the west coast.
The next leg of our journey took us by plane much farther south to Punta Arenas, on the banks of the Straits of Magellan. Patagonia is a very large geographical area. In Punta Arenas we were about as far south as Dublin is to the north of the equator. Though South America was entering summer, we were warned to bring clothes to fit about any kind of weather, including cold, rain, and wind. Our group was very fortunate to enjoy beautiful weather nearly every day.
The white area in the top of the map below is the 3rd largest ice field on Earth, after Antarctica and Greenland. We traveled by bus from Punta Arenas to that area to see some of the most beautiful Andean mountains, lakes, and glaciers. Join us in future blog posts as we show some highlights of our trip.
Our View From Iowa 
I am officially jealous!
I look forward to your further posts. I’ve seen photos posted by a HS classmate who traveled with her sister from current home in So Carolina to Patagonia area for a late Nov-early Dec trip. She posted from Easter Island, Bariloche, & Moreno glacier among places they hiked. I’ve watched videos marketing Patagonia from the Lindblad travel folks & wished I’d done it when physically possible. Great you guys did it!
We are working on those posts now. We are so glad we made the trip. A big plus was that we included two friends in our group.
Sounds like a wonderful journey of discovery!
I love hearing your travel posts and look forward to this one as well. Great way to wrap up a year! Wishing you many exciting adventures in the new year.
Thank you. It more than met our expectations.
This sounds like a great trip. What company is running the tour?
Overseas Adventure Travels or OAT out of Boston.