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Into the Unknown - Travels in Chilean Patagonia

A feature from 2007 talking about Mark's trip through Chile's Region XI with American landscape photographer Linde Waidhofer. Originally published in Outdoor Photography magazine.

San Valentin, the highest peak in Chilean Patagonia looms over Lago General Carrera

A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to travel in Patagonia with American landscape photographer Linde Waidhofer, taking in some of the more famous national parks in the southern Andes but also some lesser known areas in Chile’s Region XI. This area yielded some of the most beautiful landscape I have ever seen, along with complete peace and quiet, having very few or no other visitors. As if this were not enough, looking back on it now, the journey also proved to be a major turning point in my photography!

I flew from London to Santiago in Chile, with Varig via Sao Paulo in Brazil, thus avoiding a North American stop and the pain of US immigration. I spent a few days on my own in Santiago before joining Linde’s workshop tour. The city, as advertised, is quite modern and clean and tidy and has a European feel to it. It is not by any means a spectacular city in terms of architecture, though there are a few nice buildings. It is, however, a majestic location, with the towering Andes as a backdrop, but these are rarely seen through the smog which hangs over this traffic-clogged metropolis. The Chileans are a friendly bunch, especially when they want you to eat in their restaurants, which are many and varied, as long as you like beef, lamb and seafood. And if you like seafood, a trip to the Mercado Central is a must. Situated in the middle of this bustling market, surrounded by fresh fish stalls, shoppers, tourists, musicians and restaurateurs vying for trade, was the perfect spot to lunch on conger eel soup and sea bass. The building itself is an impressive wrought iron structure, if slightly dilapidated, which hailed from England – Birmingham, in fact, according to my waiter.

From Santiago I flew south to Balmaceda airport in Aysen (Region XI) to be met by Cado Avenali, who drove me to the hotel in nearby Coyhaique to meet Linde and her husband Lito Tejada-Flores and the rest of the (small) group for the trip. It turns out that Cado and Lito are old climbing partners, and that Cado and his Chilean wife Ruth live in Coyhaique from where they run a small Patagonia guide service, Salvaje Corazon. During the trip, it also turns out that Lito is a mine of information on Photoshop, so we had a perfect blend of photographic and local knowledge on hand. I was already familiar with Linde’s work of the American south west from her wonderful book Stone and Silence, so I was looking forward to seeing some of her Patagonian photography, and I wasn’t disappointed with the prints she had to show as an introduction to the trip. I was astonished, however, to learn that she had abandoned the Fuji Velvia used to photograph the red rocks of Stone and Silence and had produced all these beautiful prints with a Canon EOS 10D and an Epson printer! As my camera bag contained a huge mahogany and chrome-plated nickel Deardorff 45 Special and some boxes of Velvia Quickload at the time, I was somewhat sceptical of the digital revolution – but keen to find out more having seen the results!

From Coyhaique we spent about a day travelling south to our lodge near Lago General Carrera. The trip was punctuated by rain showers, but one or two nice spots of autumn colour were starting to appear amongst the mainly green Lenga trees. I managed to set up the camera for the first time here for a lovely red tree set against some sweeping trunks alongside a mountain stream, at last proving that I had the thing with me after the previous day’s short trip around Coyhaique when it stayed firmly in its bag!

We travelled on south to Cochrane and further south still to Lago Esmerelda, with its beautiful patterns of reeds in the water near the shore. After a second cloudy and wet morning (hence no pre-breakfast sunrise shoot) we headed back north from Cochrane, stopping to photograph the confluence of the Rio Baker and Rio Chacabuco en route and eventually returning to Lago General Carrera to stay at the lovely Terra Luna lodge near Puerto Guadal. I settled in to my wooden cabin with wood-burning stove (required at night) and lake view. Despite the rain, it was clearly a beautiful spot, and with three mornings to come here I was hoping to get lucky with a sunrise!

It’s worth noting that the lodges were mainly fishing and climbing lodges, and as we were there in the early autumn and the fishing season had closed, they were just about deserted. So we could spread out after dinner and look at the day’s images on laptops, and learn about RAW files, stitched panoramas and burn and dodge layers.

The area around the lake proved to be stunning, and I was amazed to discover that it isn’t a national park. I wondered why there weren’t more people about – it’s true that the road from Coyhaique isn’t paved so progress can be slow (and the southern highway didn’t even exist until the 1980s), but it’s decent enough for any car, so I asked Cado if the winters were really tough. He said they could be, but no worse than back in Colorado, for instance, and in response to my question about the lack of people said “This in the frontier – people haven’t arrived yet”.

Rio Ibanez

The weather looked promising on the second day at Terra Luna so we were up at six and after a quick cafecito headed just a short distance along the lake for a sunrise shoot over the lake toward Cerro San Valentin (the highest mountain in Chilean Patagonia) and surrounding peaks. We were rewarded with delightful pink pre-dawn light and lovely soft side-light as the sun rose, and I managed to use a full seven sheets of Velvia! After breakfast we travelled around the lake to the Marble Cave and bobbed about in a small boat looking at amazing white, yellow, a black formations rising out of deep blue water – mesmerising! The 5x4 wasn’t a lot of use here, but I borrowed Lito’s Canon Rebel (300D) which was great fun to try out with just a standard lens, and Linde’s 14mm Sigma. I was hooked!

This productive day was capped off by an asado back at Terra Luna – a whole lamb barbecued outside over an open fire, and served with salad. The local butcher who prepared this feast doubled up as the entertainment, with folk songs accompanied by accordion.

The following day was spent making the long journey back from Puerto Guadal to Coyhaique with several photo stops along the way, including an overlook of Rio Ibañez which yielded a lovely abstract of water and reeds, one of my favourite compositions from the trip.

After Coyhaique we would fly to Punta Arenas down in Chile’s Region XII and on to Torres del Paine National Park for the Classic Patagonia leg of the journey. I had been here the previous year on an Explore trip and was glad to be going back specifically to take photographs, but this familiarity meant that it wouldn’t live up to the revelation of Unknown Patagonia. The other revelation for me, of course, was the idea of shooting fine art landscape with a digital camera, which I now do all the time. I asked Linde about the change, and she said that she had loved working with Velvia film for many years, but when something better comes long, why would you continue to use that? I was sceptical then, but a couple of years down the line, I tend to agree.