Argentina

In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin

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Certainly not a book I disliked, but at times I was left a bit nonplussed by this classic of travel writing. Published in 1977, Chatwin certainly records a detailed travelogue and sets out an import record of the people he meets as he journeys from Buenos Aires to Punta Arenas, I think. And herein lies one of my problems with the book, it wasn’t always that clear. The chapter endings were also slightly random, sometimes witty remarks, but other times they really didn’t hit the mark. However the book includes excellent histories of Welsh settlers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the prison in Ushuaia, the most southerly town in the world, and interviews with numerous British immigrants and their descendants. His reports of dinosaurs, giant mammals, mythical, magical and occult aspects of the region are the highlights. I wanted to read the book in anticipation of my own trip and was immediately astonished by Chatwin’s descriptions of the desert: “the sea of grey green thornscrubs laying off in sweeps and rising in terraces and the white dust steaming off the saltpans, and, on the horizon, land and sky dissolving into an absence of colour”. I have been here for three days and this is spot on, far from the snow topped peaks of Patagonia in my mind. Chatwin’s account has informed and intrigued me, and i’m sure he will help me get the most out of my own time In Patagonia, which as I finish this has only just begun.