Category: Epic Adventures

At Swoop Patagonia we’re obsessed with the ends of the Earth. Few things excite us more than the view of peak after snowy peak after climbing a stiff mountain pass. Or the release after holding your breath as you watch a puma pass by with her cubs, or a wind so bracing it cuts like […]

The Andes Mountains are ancient. They’ve formed a rampart down the spine of South America for around 14 million years. In Chile, they’ve helped form landscapes as wildly diverse as the Atacama Desert on its high altitude plateau, the ragged and glacier-draped coastline of the Chilean Fjords, and of course the great granite peaks of […]

Before I moved to Chile, I had never really given the stars much thought. I grew up in the middle of England, where the skies were either grey because of rain clouds or glowed orange at night thanks to sodium street lamps. I knew the same small handful of constellations that everyone else did and […]

Ushuaia on the southern tip of Argentina can feel like the last outpost of civilization. It’s somewhere that’s always embraced that image: tourist slogans reading ‘fin del mundo’ are everywhere, alongside street art showing convicts in stripy prison uniforms, remembering when this part of Tierra del Fuego was somewhere you were once sent as a […]

A road trip is one of the great dreams of travel. It’s no wonder that time and again songwriters have returned to the idea of a car and a highway that stretches on forever as the ultimate promise of freedom. Bruce Springsteen practically built a career on the idea, and everyone knows that Route 66 […]

I’ve always loved horses. Ever since I was little, I’ve felt a deep connection to them. Growing up in a city didn’t provide much opportunity to ride or even be around them. My grandmother’s brothers kept horses, but women weren’t allowed to ride them, let alone little girls. There was still a part of me […]

Anticipation is an underrated aspect of travel. There’s so much pleasure that goes into planning a trip and looking forward to what you’ll do when you get there, from studying your  itinerary to putting together a packing list. For me, that’s only heightened when you’re going on a trek, where the journey is as much […]

The coastline of Chilean Patagonia is crinkly edged. The Andes Mountains begin their slow eruption for the sea here, leaving behind them a steep-sided landscape punctuated by some of the world’s most spectacular fjords. It’s a perfect landscape when seen from the water on an expedition cruise or by kayak, but until relatively recently little […]