Before the Crowds: Visiting Patagonia at the Edge of Tourism Development

[0:00] When most people think about Patagonia, they imagine dramatic landscapes, remote trails, and untouched wilderness. But what we don't talk about enough is that Patagonia is very early on in its tourism development. It's still forming today. And in today's episode, we're going to talk about what it means to visit a place before it's fully

[0:21] developed for tourism and the responsibility that comes with being early. I'm joined today with Chris Christensen from the Amateur Traveler website and podcast, who recently visited Patagonia and experienced a model of tourism that's deeply connected to environmental research, conservation, and local stewardship. This conversation isn't about where to go or what to see.

[0:47] It's about how travel can either extract or contribute to the development of a country, especially in fragile ecosystems. I'm Kiara, your host of Put the Guidebook Down, and welcome, Chris. How are you today?

[1:01] I'm good, I'm good, thanks for having me.

[1:05] Thank you for coming on to the show. Maybe you can start by introducing a little bit more about yourself, going in depth about Amateur Traveler, you, why you started it.

[1:14] It's been a journey. Back then, podcasting, I was hand-coding RSS feeds. If you don't know what that is, be glad. I've been doing Amateur Traveler as a podcast for over 20 years. Started in July of 2005. Honestly, thought I was late to podcasting in July of 2005, because it had been going on for

[1:36] months by the time I started it. Wow.

[1:39] So podcasting officially started in September of 2004. So I got in in the first year of podcasting, a little bit before Apple jumped into podcasting, just a couple episodes before Apple Podcasts, well, Apple iTunes podcast support came out at that point.

[1:57] Wow, a major throwback to iTunes right there.

[2:00] Well, there were no iPhones, right? And so podcasts at that point meant downloading it to your computer, I was going to say laptop, but most of us didn't have laptops back then, and then syncing to your iPod. So a little different than it is today.

[2:16] Yes, quite a bit different. But nevertheless, you're still podcasting, going strong and growing every year.

[2:23] Yeah, it's led to some interesting and surprising experiences, like getting to be paparazzi for the day, getting invited to the White House, being inducted in the Podcasting Hall of Fame. And in other news, there's a Podcasting Hall of Fame. And not to mention lots and lots of different sponsored trips,

[2:43] including this trip that we're going to talk about to Patagonia, which was sponsored by a cruise, a Patagonian cruise company down there called Astralis.

[2:51] Wow, yeah, no, I mean, a lot to cover, and that's why you're on today's episode, to really give insight into all of this for all of our listeners to learn from. So I'm just going to jump right into it, because we're going to start really with

[3:04] the theme of today's episode around what Patagonia feels like before the mass tourism arrives. So what surprised you most about the scale and pace of tourism in Patagonia when you visited?

[3:17] Well, let's define it a little bit here, because there are different parts of Patagonia that are much more touristed. So Torres del Paine National Park, for instance, is a must-do for a lot of people, that is on the mainland of Chile and Chilean Patagonia. Patagonia is spread across Chile and Argentina.

[3:36] But what I was doing was further south, basically further south than the South American continent. So south of the southern tip of South America is Tierra del Fuego, for instance, which is a very large island with national parks on it, with like 600 different glaciers on it.

[3:57] I mean, very large, with whole mountain ranges on it, the Darwin Mountain Range. And then you're down in the Beagle Passage, and you're south of the Straits of Magellan, and we've made it down to Cape Horn as well, which we think of as the southernmost point of South America.

[4:14] It's really an island south of South America, but it's the beginning of the Southern Ocean at that point, so the rough waters and things are swirling around Cape Horn, you won't always get a chance to land there when you're on a boat. So that part of Patagonia,

[4:34] the ship that I was on, Astralis, is the only normal tour that I'm aware of that tours there. So they have two boats going from Punta Arenas to Ushuaia and Ushuaia to Punta Arenas, four nights each way. And if you're not on that, you're not seeing a lot else. So Punta Arenas is a city,

[4:58] Ushuaia is the southernmost city in the world, southernmost city. And by the definition of what a city is in the UN, the Chileans would point out that there is a city that you looked south on from Ushuaia that they consider a city, but it's too small for the UN to consider it. So you're in areas that are,

[5:21] a lot of national parks, but don't even have park rangers. And so our guides, for instance, we were saying, well, who maintains this trail? And they were saying, well, we do, we're the ones who maintain this trail and these pathways that you're going on, and things like that are maintained, a lot of them, by Astralis.

[5:40] And then they've actually partnered with a scientific institute up in Punta Arenas, because there's a lot of things we don't know about that area. So they were doing experiments with Astralis, there were traps on various bushes looking for insects, because there are probably insects we don't know about down in that area.

[5:58] And so the deal is that the institute will train the guides so that they are very knowledgeable about what you're seeing, and then in exchange, they bring the scientists down for periods of time to do experiments down in especially Tierra del Fuego.

[6:14] Wow, so talk about an immersive experience, because the guides are even immersed in the collection process of specimens, so very knowledgeable, accredited in what they're talking about. That's the first time I've heard about this type of tour guiding.

[6:30] Yeah, well, I would almost pitch it to you as Antarctica light, in the sense that if you've looked at how much an Antarctic cruise costs, you know, I know I'm on a mailing list that gets me a discounted cruise, or if you act now you can get one on that last cabin,

[6:51] sharing a triple, for sort of $5,000 to $9,000, and that's sharing a triple. And this is like $1,900 for a four-night, and then we did both ways, so it would be twice that, obviously, for both ways, and that's per person again. So not as expensive, but you're spending your time

[7:15] in front of glaciers, in zodiacs with penguins, and those sort of things as well, but not quite as far south, obviously, down in South America. That's South America, that's Antarctica.

[7:30] Right, right, wow, I mean, like hanging out with the penguins, I know that's been on my list for a long time. I feel like that's a different type of safari that we don't really talk about as much. I know I've talked personally with my own friends and I'm like,

[7:43] I want to go see the penguins down in Patagonia, they're like, but aren't they just like at the Antarctica side of the world? I'm like, hmm, okay guys.

[7:52] There are multiple places in the world you can see penguins. Some not as far south, the northernmost penguins are the Galapagos, which is almost at the equator, and so you can see them there. You can see them in the Falklands, we've seen penguins, you can see them in southern Australia,

[8:08] you can also see them down in this region, obviously, in Patagonia, and down in South Africa as well, there are penguins down by Cape Town, we've seen penguins there as well. But it is still very cool to be out in a place where it's you and penguins.

[8:29] And so one of the spots that we did on the way from Punta Arenas to Ushuaia, we stopped at an island, but we didn't even get off the island. The island was a nesting site for penguins, and so we basically were in our zodiacs, all the excursions from this boat were in a zodiac.

[8:49] So this is an expedition class ship, so those tend to be about 100 to 300 passengers, there's some that are smaller than that, this was 200 passenger capacity, but less than 100 on the boat with us. And so you're getting off, you're getting into a zodiac, a moving zodiac sometimes,

[9:09] because the waves and the weather down there can cause for interesting landings sometimes. And I'll tell you more about that when we went to Cape Horn, because the first time we were not able to land because of the weather.

[9:23] But so we were off this island, and when I say off the island, 10 feet off the island, I mean, we were basically right at the beach watching the penguins there, but that particular island, we were not allowed to land. Then there's another island that we hit on the other way, the other direction, Ushuaia to Punta Arenas,

[9:40] that is right by Punta Arenas, and so there are some day trips you can get from Punta Arenas out to this island, and there you just walk in a big circle around these penguins that are breeding, and they're digging their holes and they're putting their heads back and calling for

[9:57] their mates in a sound that sounds like a donkey braying. It's an interesting display.

[10:03] Not what I would have pictured, but okay.

[10:09] I can imagine. This is so fascinating, and I know we're talking a little bit more on to the wildlife side, but I want to bring it back in towards more of the ecosystem and specimen collection, just because on this podcast and our previous episodes, we've talked about ecotheatrics versus genuine ecotourism,

[10:27] and I feel that this experience you're describing is very much in line with what we like to see in terms of actual ecotourism. So maybe you can shed some more light on how these guides were trained.

[10:40] And I would say that I wouldn't pitch it as a wildlife tour with cool landscapes, I would pitch it as amazing landscapes with some real interesting wildlife moments, especially the penguins. So probably the highlight of this tour are the glaciers, because you're down in this area where there are

[11:03] lots and lots of glaciers, and you're going and hiking near, you can't get right next to a glacier because they're calving, and that would be bad. And you're learning about, the question of global warming has to come up, because most of these glaciers are shrinking.

[11:21] And so you're also learning what happens to the land there after the glaciers recede, and they'll show you, here's what happens, first you'll get the lichens, and then you'll get the mosses, and then you'll get the fire bushes and these kind of plants, and then eventually you'll get trees,

[11:39] especially there's a particular type of, not a beech tree down there that is literally named "not a beech tree" in Latin, but it's a particular type of a beech tree, but not really a beech tree. And so you'll get a forest of those, but there are places you can stand and you can tell the glacier,

[12:00] until very recently, came to right here, because here's where the forest is to your right, and everything to your left is still mosses and small bushes and lichen and things. And so that's another part of it, is you're seeing the change in the landscape.

[12:17] You never see a glacier the same way twice, especially some of these that were so active. So one of the glaciers we went to was so active when we were there that the guide kept having to pause, because we would just hear this great big crack, and we would

[12:31] all look over to see how big was the ice that was going to be falling off this glacier this time.

[12:37] Oh my god.

[12:38] And different glaciers are more active or less active depending on what type of glacier they are, and how much rain and snow are up in the higher areas, and what the incline is, and is it a hanging glacier or a valley, all of those sort of things

[12:54] impact how rapid a glacier is, and therefore how much it changes from day to day.

[13:01] Right.

[13:02] So that is a fascinating place to get to explore that.

[13:06] Yeah, right, I mean, this is like a nature textbook coming to life, or a nature documentary, this is all really fascinating, and it really sounds like you had this unique experience in terms of really getting into the nitty gritty of the ecological systems that are existing in the region.

[13:24] Yeah, I wouldn't do this tour if you weren't intellectually curious. Because your entertainment, for instance, you know, when I say cruise, I had somebody I was talking to the other day was like, I don't think I'd ever do a cruise, I'm not interested in a cruise. I said, I understand what you're saying,

[13:41] and I know what you're picturing, but here you're not talking about, there's no show at night, there's no casino, there's no art auctions, there's no napkin folding, that's not what you're talking about. What you're talking about is your entertainment is somebody talking to you about the different types of penguins,

[14:00] or let's talk about the indigenous people that were in this region before the Europeans showed up, the Yamani, particularly down in Tierra del Fuego, who didn't wear clothes, even though they lived in very cold climates, and went around all their

[14:17] time in their boats with a fire in the boat, and you'll learn about the Yamani people and they'll have some recreations of what a Yamani temporary structure would have looked like, and talk about their diets, and those sort of things as well, or they'll talk about glaciation, or they'll talk about the

[14:34] many different types of birds you're seeing. So if you're not intellectually curious, this is not your cruise, this is not your trip. I wouldn't want you to have the wrong impression. But if you like seeing glaciers and penguins and that sort of jagged peaks like in Tierra del Fuego,

[14:57] I'm sorry, like in Torres del Paine, there were places here that I think rivaled that, in terms of just these jagged peaks, snow-capped with glaciers coming down them, just a stunning, stunning landscape. One day, we were just cruising along, we had just left, I think, the Straits of Magellan,

[15:19] and we were heading out to the Pacific to come back in the Beagle Passage, and I think that day I saw like 100 waterfalls.

[15:32] Wow.

[15:32] And these are ones that are probably not even named, right, they're just little tiny rivulets coming down the sides of these rugged mountains on the sides. And so it's that kind of trip.

[15:40] Yeah, that's a very good way to identify what target audiences for this, and I would even encourage people who are maybe just curious about ecotourism, or maybe a little bit into that cultural element that you were describing there, to perhaps consider this type of trip.

[15:56] But I want to go a little bit more into now exploring this area with you in terms of ethical travel, a destination isn't yet overrun or really populated with tourism, especially the region you were visiting. So then, how do travelers avoid accelerating harm, even unintentionally, when visiting these destinations that are just beginning to pop up in tourism?

[16:19] A lot of that has to do with the outfitters you're working with. You have to work with people who care about the areas, because they will be the ones who say, you can do this, you can't do that. For instance, no, we don't get off the boat here,

[16:33] if we get off the boat, we're disturbing the penguins in this particular habitat, that's just the rule. You can do this, you can't do that, and also safety, right, where can you safely get to on a glacier, right, because I remember being up in Alaska on another expedition class ship, and you sort of think you're going to take your zodiac all the way up to a glacier. Well, that was a glacier where there was also ice below you,

[16:54] so not only might ice fall on you from above, but it would come up. So you stay a quarter mile away, and you're still looking at a huge

[17:12] wall of ice, I think the wall of ice we were looking at at one point here was like 300 feet tall, so you don't realize sometimes what the scale was, they had to sort of tell you the dimensions, because you're not going to go up

[17:26] and touch it, right, that's just not, not here, not in an active glacier, especially the places where you can go to glacier ice caves and things like that has to be a different type of glacier, and that's great, but you have to be with the

[17:43] right people who know what you can and can't do, and what you should and shouldn't do, obviously. So for instance, little things like, we would get off the zodiac and got back on the boat, the very first thing you did is you put

[17:57] your boots in a disinfectant, and you did that both coming and going, and because you were trying, they don't know exactly what harm you could have by tracing from one place to another, but they're just trying to be conscious of, let's not do that. Because there are so many places, and this is,

[18:22] this is one of those places where you will also hear stories of people who did stupid things with environments. So during the Perón era, someone said, wouldn't it be cool if we had beavers that we could hunt for pelts and sell the furs like they do up in Canada?

[18:41] And so they brought beavers down from Canada and let them loose in Patagonia, in Tierra del Fuego, and two problems, well, among the problems.

[18:54] Just two?

[18:55] There are no natural predators down here. The cold that you get from the really cold Canadian winters, and then also the adrenaline that you get from running from grizzly bears or polar bears, you don't develop a commercially viable pelt, so first of all it was a failure commercially, and then they're ruining the forest down here,

[19:20] they're taking down the forest. So we saw one forest that was now just marshland and plains, and in this latitude, forests do not grow quickly. And so you see the results of people making stupid decisions about the environment, and that's something that will have an impact for our generation,

[19:44] even if they decided they were going to get rid of all the beavers now, it would take a while, and there's just nobody down there to do it.

[19:52] Wow, interesting to see the results of bad choices.

[19:57] It's not quite as bad as the rabbit-proof fence in Australia, and the whole, let's bring in wild dogs and bring in rabbits and things like that, but there are other places people have made dumb decisions as well.

[20:09] Yeah, I was going to say, I'm familiar with the one in Australia, that problem, but not the beaver situation, that was a new one for me to learn about. Wow, okay. So then, because you talked about choosing guides or agencies that are operating there that do respect safety and the environment, what

[20:32] are the signs people should look for when trying to decide if this guide is actually genuine on the booking site, like they are not going to encourage me to touch the glaciers, for example?

[20:40] Yeah, it's tougher, it's tougher to know, who, what should they look... so I met up with this group, Astralis, at the Association of, sorry, the Adventure Travel Trade Association. And that's one group that is trying to work on certification for different guides

[21:03] to try and tell the difference between caring for the environment and greenwashing, right? That's really the thing, is you can look at the website and see what they say, but then you also want to look at their practices. What are they doing with wastewater,

[21:16] what are they doing with, you know, those sort of things if it's a boat, if it's on land, who are they hiring, because that's the other thing too, is how are they affecting the community, if there is a community in this place, there is no community and there are no resorts of any type down there,

[21:37] but those are the sorts of things you look at, but I would also look for accreditation, especially as we see more and more accreditation happening in that space.

[21:51] Yeah, those are good tips to look into, I know sometimes it can get a little bit tricky with the accreditation badges that we see sometimes, because now in this day and age it's so easy to fake some of those, so I feel like sometimes this is where we really see the gut intuition coming in, or

[22:08] even trusting those people who are putting out content and have been on those experiences to be truthful in their reviews.

[22:16] Well, you're looking for certain signs too, like you get on this boat and the first thing they hand you is, here's your waterproof dry bag, you can take this with you, but here's your water bottle, because we're not going to give you any plastic water bottles.

[22:30] I mean, there's some sort of basic ways that people who are caring about these things are doing, and there's water, filtered water in the hallway, fill up your water bottle, take it with you, but we're not going to give you anything, we're not going to give you plastic water bottles,

[22:44] we don't want to deal with that kind of trash. Those are sorts of things you look for, those sort of signs, that most people who are really trying to be constructive are doing little practical steps as well as the big steps.

[22:59] Yeah, plus, not to mention that drinking from a reusable water bottle also helps save money, I'm looking at you, my budget travelers, if you can drink the tap water, do so.

[23:11] Yeah, exactly.

[23:13] Cool. Well, one of my last questions actually is going to talk now about your post experience with this type of excursion. How has this influenced your decision in terms of what type of excursions you go on, or how you travel now?

[23:27] I don't know if this particular, I mean, a lot of that influence has already happened, right? I already learned that I love expedition class, small boat, let's go places that big boats can't and won't go, let's travel with adventurous people, because they're just more fun. So I've done the big boats, for instance,

[23:51] and I remember going to a rainforest in Costa Rica, and it was a standard excursion off the big boat, it rains in that particular rainforest in Costa Rica 350 days a year, someone on my tour was complaining that it was raining. And I found that the more adventurous you do things,

[24:18] the more likely you're running into people who have a sense of adventure, a little more flexibility, and are generally just less complainers. So it tends to attract an interesting clientele. So this year I was doing a cruise in the Amazon as well, or the expedition class ship to Patagonia,

[24:42] I do like doing things that are not just the, well, I wouldn't do the big bus tour again, I've done that before, the first time I was in Egypt I did the 40 person bus tour, and that's the last one I'll do, I had a lovely time, terrific guide,

[25:01] but I'd rather do something with fewer people and a little more adventurous people. But that wasn't decided for me by this cruise, that was one of the reasons that I sought this one, is I already knew that of myself.

[25:15] Sure, it was the previous experiences that helped kind of set the pathway to get to this one.

[25:21] Yep, yep.

[25:22] Sure.

[25:23] But, I mean, that does mean you've got to be flexible too, right? I mentioned you can't always land at Cape Horn, it's about 50-50. And the first day we were there, we got up early in the morning because they were going to try and do it at 6 o'clock in the morning, at first light basically,

[25:41] and we were in our waterproof pants and our life jackets and our waterproof jacket, you've got to wear all the gear because you're getting in a zodiac. And they said, yeah, we can't do it today, the weather's not consistent. And they had told us the night before,

[26:01] they said, the first thing they're going to have a look at is the wind such that they can even safely get the zodiacs from deck 3 into the water. And we said, well, how windy does it have to be to not be safe? They said, well, it's about 35 knot winds right now,

[26:18] so 35 nautical miles an hour, more than 35 miles an hour, and they said, that's really iffy. And it turns out the next morning it was 56 to 72 nautical miles an hour. After they told us that this was not happening, we went outside and went, yeah, no, I'm not surprised this isn't happening.

[26:35] But then you realize that the boat is leaning at about a 15-degree angle because the wind is just so constantly pushing up against it. So when you do things more adventurous, sometimes you've got to be flexible, it may not work. If you do wildlife, for instance, any trip you do with wildlife,

[26:57] the wildlife is wild, it may or may not show up in the way that you want it to.

[27:01] Or pose the way you want it to.

[27:01] Right, exactly, exactly.

[27:04] It's all about flexibility and adaptability.

[27:04] Exactly, and enjoying what you get.

[27:08] Yes, period. Well, we're coming up on the end of our episode, Chris, is there any final words, tips, tricks, advice that you'd like to leave with our listeners before we close out this episode?

[27:23] I'd say, you don't just, keep exploring, your comfort zone is stretchable. There are things that you think you might not be able to do that you're going to be surprised are going to be in your new comfort zone. And that's something that I encourage people, is,

[27:40] try the thing that seems just a little uncomfortable, and you're going to find that the next time you want to do something else, it's going to be a little further out.

[27:51] Yeah, very well said. Well, Chris, I want to thank you so much for coming on our podcast, and to all of our listeners who were tuning into this episode, I think Patagonia is a great example of how different ecosystems and natural landscape destinations can take a further effort to help with preserving our

[28:12] ecosystems and keeping it green authentically in tourism. Because when travel is built alongside conservation, research and local knowledge, it becomes a tool for protection and not overtourism. So this is the kind of travel we care about here at Kultura Travel. So this has been a great insight for me to learn as well,

[28:33] and I hope everyone else listening.

[28:35] Well, thanks for having me.

[28:37] Awesome. Well, thank you everyone. Until next time, remember to put the guidebook down, pay attention to the land beneath your feet, and travel like the future depends on it, because it just might. Thank you.