It’s said that if you eat the berries of the calafate bush you will return to Patagonia. Patagonia is a place that’s wild and windswept and so capacious it could constitute its very own country.
There are two Patagonias, the forest-cloaked Andes straddling Chile and Argentina, and the Argentinian steppe that flares eastwards for about 400 kilometres before petering out into the Atlantic Ocean. Capping this tableau like a rough-drawn border between two countries is the Southern Patagonian Icefield, a vast freshwater reserve that oozes into valleys and basins, carving out a geological history as it goes.
“If you come here [to the icefield] in November and December you can see orchids and hummingbirds – and glaciers!” says a guide.
It’s a marvel, for despite the frigid icecap and the chilled air arising from it, this is a temperate region filled with forests of beech and 10 species of orchid and that portentous, yellow-flowered calafate bush. Foliage curls between the boardwalk slats at Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, while Perito Moreno Glacier is caught mid-surge, a tsunami frozen in time. One of the world’s few advancing glaciers, the five-kilometre-wide behemoth calves into Canal de los Tempanos, sending waves and splinters of ice heavenwards.
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I am Jeff Clark, founder of Internet Brothers, producer of this blog, and passionate about hiking. I live in Western NC near the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests are just out my door, so the content will focus on these areas, but let me know what you would like to see on the site. 
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