Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

 Yup. Missed that "Friday" thing once again! Back to Patagonia... Moving on from Patagonia National Park, we drove north up the Carretera Austral to Puerto Rio Tranquillo, where the Marble Caves (Cuevas de Marmol) are found on the shores of Lago General Carrera. We arrived at lunchtime after about 2 1/2 hours on the gravel of the Carretera, just in time to gobble our lunch and catch a tour. The caves are truly marble, in its natural state, of course. As marble (metamorphosed limestone) is slightly soluble in water, wave action along the lakeshore for some 6000 years has carved out low caverns into which you can take a boat. It is possible to rent kayaks in the town for a multi-hour expedition, but as we didn't have time, we took the commercial tour in a small open boat. Sadly, the guide's constant stream of interpretation and information was all in rapid Spanish with no pauses, so I was able to catch only a bit of it myself, and couldn't pass any along to my compa...

A year ago I was in Patagonia with my husband and brother-in-law. Part of our trip was a 10-day road trip through Argentina and Chile. I wrote about the early parts of that trip here and here . The center of the trip was Patagonia National Park of Chile, not so very far from the southern terminus of the Carretera Austral. Many of these photos are by Dave Dempsey. Entering the park. Tom and I are rearranging the car in the background, to make room for one of the hitch-hikers hoping for a lift to the campground. The Parque Nacional Patagonia has at its core the Chacabuco Valley, until recently one of the region's largest sheep ranches. It was purchased in 2004 by Kris and Doug Tompkins, to be re-wilded, then turned into a park under the control of the Chilean government. Doug Tompkins didn't live to see his dream fulfilled, but did get things well under way. His widow eventually negotiated the creation of five Chilean national parks through the-profit conservancy that owned the ...

A year ago, we (my husband Dave Dempsey, his brother Tom, and myself) were in Patagonia with little thought of the global pandemic, let alone the rest of what made 2020 an awful year for me personally. It was a wonderful time.   Our first outing, while we waited to get a different rental car (the first one we were given wasn't cleared to enter Chile, and frankly we doubted it would have survived the trip), was an overnight hike to the Refugio Otto Meiling in Nahuel Huapi National Park, just outside of San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina. The heart of the park, and our main reason for visiting, is the Volcán Tronador. Seen from the parking lot, the mountain reminds one of the volcanoes of Washington State--large and covered with glaciers. The trailhead was accessed by a long gravel road, most of it under one-way controls--traffic uphill in the morning, down in the afternoon. We had to scramble to get through in time, and made a late start to the hike after the long drive. The fi...

In February 2020--remember those days when we could still travel and move about?--my husband, brother-in-law, and I traveled through Patagonia. I'm starting to be able to go through those photos again and share some. I have used more of my husband's photos than I have in the past, in part because they are better than mine, and in part so that his talent can be shared. One of our early stops on an 11-day, 1600-mile road trip on both sides of the Chile-Argentina border, was the Cueva de Las Manos (Cave of the Hands), a UNESCO World Heritage Site established in 1999. In a canyon carved by the Rio Pinturas into the basalt, a lengthy section of overhang (not really a cave) is covered with thousands of pictographs, primarily the silhouettes of hands. The drive down Argentina's Ruta 40 over the Patagonia steppe felt a lot like driving minor backroads through the US Southwest. At least it, unlike the 17-miles road to the cave, was mostly paved (though we learned to read at least th...