Purple Magazine
— Travel F/W 2014 issue 1
Christmas in Patagonia _ Argentina
photography and text by MAX FARAGO
Patagonia is where Bruce Chatwin looked for dinosaurs and found Welsh settlers. So last Christmas, my girlfriend Clara and I went and had a look for ourselves. We didn’t find any fossils, but many of the rocks you see on the ground there have been worked on by the native Tehuelche people, and it is not uncommon to find carved knives or arrows that could be thousands of years old lying on the windblown earth.
Even though it was summer in Argentina, it was very windy. Yet the view more than made up for it — 180 degrees of earth and 180 degrees of ocean. The ocean is vast. You hardly ever see a passing boat, and sea lions lounge on the beach without a bother in the world. There are lambs by the coast, which feed on samphire plants and sea purslane, and when you cook one over an open fire it is already salted and delicious. Occasionally, you see a family of guanacos or ostriches pass, but other than that you are totally alone.
The house in the photos is on the Atlantic Coast and was built quite recently by the mother of my girlfriend. It is extremely remote; the nearest landmark is the small city of Comodoro Rivadavia, a couple of hours to the south. It takes about three days to drive to the house from Buenos Aires. Without a single turn in the road, it’s easy to go nuts — and this is just a fraction of the way into Patagonia.
The man who looks after the property is called Williams, and it’s a three-hour drive for him to drop off gas for our generator. When he arrives, we talk. He looks as though he has been farming in Wales for his entire life, yet he only speaks Spanish, has constant sunburn, and has never left Patagonia. It is hard to know how old Williams is, but he remembers tea as being the most important meal of the day at his grandparents’ house. That, too, is extremely remote.
