Back in 1961, the great travel writer Jan Morris wrote that “there are not many places on the face of earth much farther away from everywhere else” than southern Chile’s Puerto Montt. In the modern nature of things, Puerto Montt, still a nicely faraway spot, is more connected to everywhere else, but Morris’ tribute to the great, wild archipelago of islands, a mountainous wilderness of magnificent fjords, virgin valleys, high lakes, crystal rivers, ribbony waterfalls, snowy peaks, and impenetrable rainforest that lie to Puerto Montt’s south—“a sort of volcanic Norway on the South Pacific shore” she called it–rings resoundingly true today. Exploring Chilean Patagonia takes us aboard the nifty little ship Ona in and through this great maze of islands, first into the Chiloe Archipelago and then into Doug and Kris Tompkins’ great gift to humanity, Pumalin National Park, which the New York Times a few years ago called “a very large paradise.”

We end with a grand flourish, flying south to Punta Arenas and the granite monoliths of Torres del Paine, some of the most imposing and inspiring of earth’s 37 billion or so acres, at the top of Melville’s list of the “attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds.”

Day 1: fly to Puerto Montt • Day 2: board Ona, begin exploration of Chilean fjords • Days 3-6: sailing in Chiloe Archipelago and Pumalin National Park aboard Ona • Day 7: fly to Puerto Montt Day 8: fly to Punta Arenas Days 9-11: hiking and wandering in Torres del Paine • Day 12: drive to Punta Arenas, fly to Santiago de Chile and onward.

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