Patagonia Quotes

“I climbed a path and from the top looked up-stream towards Chile. I could see the river, glinting and sliding through the bone-white cliffs with strips of emerald cultivation either side. Away from the cliffs was the desert. There was no sound but the wind, whirring through thorns and whistling through dead grass, and no other sign of life but a hawk, and a black beetle easing over white stones.”
― Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia

“Were the “pampas,” perhaps, flatter than the land they were crossing? He doubted it; what could be flatter than a horizontal plane?”
― César Aira, An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter

“The country remained the same, and was extremely uninteresting. The complete similarity of the productions throughout Patagonia is one of its most striking characters. The level plains of arid shingle support the same stunted and dwarf plants; and in the valleys the same thorn-bearing bushes grow. Everywhere we see the same birds and insects. Even the very banks of the river and of the clear streamlets which entered it, were scarcely enlivened by a brighter tint of green. The curse of sterility is on the land, and the water flowing over a bed of pebbles partakes of the same curse. Hence the number of waterfowl is very scanty; for there is nothing to support life in the stream of this barren river. (In regards to the steppes of Patagonia)”
― Charles Darwin, Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited During the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle Round the World, Under the Command of Capt. Fitz Roy, R.N.

“La historia de Chile es una historia desconocida, un relato maldito, con más sombras que luces, que nunca nos han contado o que nuestro inconsciente nos hace evitar”
― Omar Campos, Raptados

“We talked late into the night, arguing whether or not we, too, have journeys mapped out in our central nervous systems”
― Bruce Chatwin

“The next day, after a long, hard, circuitous day in the saddle, I camped a vertical quarter mile awayat the bottom of the same cliff. I was beginning to suspect that progress, like time,
was defined differently in Patagonia.”
― Nancy Pfeiffer