On my first visit to South America in March 2013, I spent ten days in Patagonia with good friends Chris and Lesley mainly to see the magnificent National Parks in the area – Torres del Paine (in Chilean Patagonia) and Los Glaciers (in Argentinian Patagonia) covering the Mt Fitzroy and Moreno Glacier areas.

The trip started in Buenos Aires which is a very large city (approx 20 million people) spread out over a huge area on the south side of the Rio de la Plata. My impressions and photos of BA are covered in a separate page.

Patagonia is awesome with wide open spaces, big views and the wonderful Andes Mountains and the cleanest air I have seen since outback Australia. In short Patagonia is a wild and pristine part of South America and is well worth the effort to travel there.

We spent 4 days in the Torres del Paine NP and 3 days in the Los Glaciers NP (north and south ends) with the another 3 days of travelling between these locations in our rental VW Golf. Generally I was impressed with the accommodation and restaurant quality in all locations (El Calafate, Torres del Paine and El Chalten).

In spite of the relative remoteness of the area, there were plenty of visitors around from all over the world especially in Torres del Paine with lots of hikers on the tracks doing overnight walks and staying at the excellent camping facilities along the way.

A selection of photos showing the highlights of the trip are provided below. The key piece of advice for travellers to Patagonia is to take plenty of USD in cash to pay for practically everything at 10 to 15% discount rates. In all our planning, we did not pick up this key piece of information. Also you need a yellow fever certificate to depart from Argentina (but not required for entry interestingly..!)