PATAGONIA

Mention the word Patagonia invariably the first images are high quality fleece, layer thermal wear, hiking shoes and related gadgets et al ... a brand marketing success story for the trendy, keep up with the Jones younger set and older wannabes who can afford the price tags. As to why Patagonia, or the even more basic question, where is Patagonia one might not expect informed answers.

Patagonia is a huge land mass in Chubut Province, 500K square miles in fact, that stretches from Buenos Aires all the way down to Cape Horn, the southern most end of the continent, which is under the flag of Chile. It covers one-third of Argentina but only 4% of the population live here. Route #3 is the main north-south 'highway' that runs through this plateau like terrain ... dry, dusty, barren, extreme temperatures ... all the way to Ushuaia on Tierra del Fuego. We even saw wild animals along the highway as shown, highly unusual, we were told.

How did the name come about? On Magellan's crew there was a scribe, an Italian who could read and write. He brought with him a fiction that described a giant named Patagon. When the crew, mostly shorter men from Europe, ventured on shore they encountered much taller natives ... 6 feet plus ... amazed but un-phased they were at a lost as to what to call them. Well, the scribe had the perfect solution. How about Patagon, the Giant, and it stuck. A shorter version of more or less the same story is ... when the crew saw the natives for the first time they were amazed not only by how tall they were, but the size of their feet, hence 'Patagon' as in 'big feet'.  

There you have it. I did not make it up, I just shared the story as I heard it.