Patagonia

In three weeks’ time I will be flying to Buenos Aires to walk across South America.

Three weeks! Time has flown by.

The broad plan is for Laura and I to travel halfway down Patagonia to the narrow bit of the continent. We only have a month for our traverse so needed to find an attainable distance. Somewhere around 300 miles is likely. This will be not be Walking the Amazon Part II. There’s a gap in the ice cap that we’ll exploit to reach the Pacific coast for a quick swim before heading east on foot.

Planning has not extended much beyond that. We’ve bought some new kit – mostly with a view to using it over many future trips – and ordered some dehydrated food for the first few days.

It looks like we should cross some roads and settlements every few days on our way across so we are hoping we won’t have to carry obscene amounts of food. This will not be Walking Across Iceland Part II (I hope). We won’t be going too high into the mountains either so it shouldn’t be hard in the technical sense, just a long slog.

I don’t think either of us have much idea what to expect. We may have picked the most boring stretch of Patagonia to walk across for all we know. But even if we have, it will be new to us and, hopefully, the measurable physical challenge of crossing a country (or two) will provide satisfactory counterbalance.