Explore the breathtaking landscapes of Patagonia with PASSPORT’s intrepid adventurer, Jeff Heilman, and National Geographic-Lindblad Expeditions. A journey of a lifetime awaits.
I’ve answered the call of adventure many times. Transcendent past encounters include Finnish Lapland, 110 miles north of the Arctic Circle, where I snowmobiled at night through forests snow-sculpted into mythological creatures by the extreme temperatures; Blissful communions included swimming with the magical marine life of the Great Barrier Reef; and hearing the echoing pre-dawn call to prayer in ancient Chefchaouen, Morocco.
Natural glories included rising with the desert sun for seven days straight while mountain-biking the 120-mile White Rim Trail in Utah’s Canyonlands National Park. Spectacular, too, was hiking volcanic Stromboli in the Tyrrhenian Sea north of Sicily at dusk when the ancient “Lighthouse of the Mediterranean” erupted in a concussive boom and towering fountain of lava and rock.
No summoning, however, may be as talismanic as my recent call to Patagonia. Exhilaration hit like a supernova when I got the invite from National Geographic-Lindblad Expeditions (expeditions.com) to join an immersive 12-day trip to the fjords of Chilean Patagonia and Argentina’s Staten Island.
As M said to 007 in 1967’s You Only Live Twice, this was the big one. And it was. This adventure of 13,000 air miles and 1,300 nautical miles will forever take my breath away.
What seeker could resist the call of fabled Patagonia? Geographically divided by the mighty Andes, the world’s longest continental mountain range and second tallest behind the Himalayas, Patagonia is jointly governed by Argentina, where most of the region resides, and Chile. Combining Argentinian deserts, tablelands, and steppes with Chilean lakes, fjords, glaciers, beaches, and temperate rainforests, this 402,000-square-mile wilderness, parts still undiscovered, is among Earth’s last frontiers.
Irresistible was the call of National Geographic, the ultimate expression of immersive adventure travel, discovery, learning, and storytelling. As a lifelong birder, the opportunity to see and photograph the rare and endemic birds of Patagonia was another sweet siren call.
Lindblad Expeditions was new to me. Founded in 1958 by late Swedish-American explorer Lars-Eric Lindblad, this pioneering company is a story unto itself. Believing that travel to Earth’s remote reaches presented “an incredible opportunity to expose people to the wonder of the world so that they might think differently about the planet and our role in protecting it,” Lindblad made history in 1966 by taking the first citizen tourists to Antarctica aboard a chartered Argentinian Navy ship.
Breaking the gender barrier with 36 women among the 57 travelers, his groundbreaking voyage launched the expedition travel industry. Remembered as “the father of eco-tourism,” Lindblad subsequently opened the Galápagos Islands and Easter Island (1967), the Amazon (1972) and other exotic global destinations to visitation through the years. His 1983 autobiography, fittingly, was titled, Passport to Anywhere.
Revolutionary, too, was his design of group travel, enriching and deepening at-sea and on-shore discoveries with in-field and onboard teaching from world-renowned naturalists, conservationists, and other experts.
In 1979, his son Sven-Olof Lindblad founded Lindblad Expeditions. Established in 2004, the company’s partnership with National Geographic, recently extended to 2040, brought seven world-class National Geographic branded ships into Lindblad’s 17-vessel fleet. National Geographic scientists, oceanographers, photographers, and other educators accompany Lindblad’s year-round voyages to 120-plus destinations across all seven continents.
My epic expedition began with an eleven-hour overnight flight on LATAM from NYC to Santiago. Chile’s capital provided a picturesque and pleasurable introduction to my first visit to South America.
Based at the luxurious Ritz-Carlton Santiago (ritzcarlton.com), our group spent the day touring the city and its mix of cosmopolitan flair and history, including the continent’s tallest skyscraper and attractions such as the Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art.
Puerto Natales, Patagonia, Chile (Photo by Ksenia Ragozina)
Up at 4 A.M. the following morning, we took a private LATAM charter for the three-hour flight to Puerto Natales, gateway to southern Chilean Patagonia. Stretching from Puerto Montt, 640 miles south of Santiago, to South America’s southernmost tip, Chilean Patagonia comprises just ten percent of the region, but is a true force of nature. Her magnitude became apparent with my first aerial look at the ice fields and glaciers snaking through snow-packed valleys and snowcapped peaks. This daunting preview came with a profound awareness of history. We were headed for the cradle of the Age of Discovery, where centuries before, the arrival of European explorers had forever changed the world.
Greeted by the panoramic expanse of mountain-backed Última Esperanza (Last Hope) Sound, buses then took us across windswept plateaus dotted with colorful homes to pretty Puerto Natales. The “Ruta del Fin del Mundo” (The End of the World Route) signpost along the way was another harbinger of the extraordinary expedition ahead.
Torres del Paine National Park (Photo by Jon Chica)
Settled in the late 1800’s by European immigrants, Puerto Natales, once a sheep breeding center, retains cattle and fishing industries while serving as a tourism hub for Patagonian destinations such as Chile’s UNESCO-listed Torres del Paine National Park and its legendary three towered peak. Following lunch and a sightseeing tour, we arrived at our home for the next eight days at sea, the National Geographic Explorer.
As far back as I can remember, I wanted to travel, take pictures, and tell stories. To this day, I live for experiences, images, and words. Reading National Geographic as a kid fired that passion and purpose. Boarding that ship, the iconic National Geographic rectangle logo painted in yellow on her hull along with her name, was a summoning like no other.
I had not slept since leaving home. Explorers always answer the call though, in this case the P.A. announcement calling all passengers to the Lounge, the ship’s social hub, shortly after check in. Arrayed with cozy furniture and TV monitors, the bright glass-windowed room features the cocktail bar, Mac computers for photo sharing, and an outdoor sun deck. Lindblad’s “Circle of Truth” podium is center stage for daily briefings, recaps, and education.
We would soon bond with every member of the multinational crew, a cast of authentic characters whose upbeat personalities matched their dedication and professionalism. The same spirit of camaraderie and community extended to my fellow passengers, mostly retirees and couples from around the United States. Following our inaugural happy hour and dinner, the stage was set for the passage to Patagonia.
Up at 5 A.M., I roamed the Explorer. Originally ferrying passengers along coastal Norway as part of the famed Hurtigruten, or Coastal Express, the six-deck, 81-cabin, 148-capacity ship was retrofitted with an ice-strengthened hull, advanced navigation equipment for polar explorations, observation areas, and other expedition travel requisites.
National Geographic Explorer (Photo by National Geographic)
Key features include the glassed-windowed observation lounge and library filled with nature books on the top bridge deck. Like an omen, preeminent American ornithologist David Sibley’s biblical The Sibley Guide to Birds sat atop one bookcase. By trip’s end, I would add 32 new birds to my life list.
The wellness deck features a fitness center, sauna, and massage room. The veranda deck houses the Lounge toward the stern and Chart Room toward the bow. The cabins are concentrated on the upper and main decks. The former includes the restaurant and more casual Bistro, with the mudroom on the bottom B deck. Outside by the bridge, alone in the pummeling wind amid the eminence of the blue pre-dawn sky, the stars above, the twinkling lights of Puerto Natales, the vast waters, and mountain peaks near and far, I was king of the world.
The true sovereigns of this realm were the crew and the expedition team, synchronously plotting our voyage based on the tides, weather, wildlife sightings, and other factors. Each day at dawn, the expedition guides motored off in Zodiak boats, the famed inflatable expedition craft used by scientists, SEAL teams, and adventure operators around the world, to reconnoiter the conditions. On this momentous departure day, that meant navigating the currents of the White Narrows. Accessible only during daytime slack tides, this imposing passage of towering rock walls and islands has only 260 feet of clearance either side.
Anchors aweigh, wind whipping the flags on the navigation mast, the Explorer powered forward. Framing the scene was a full rainbow, with Andean condors circling above and a pod of Peale’s dolphins below. Lindblad thinks of everything.
We were headed for Chilean Patagonia’s fjords. Formed by the inundation of glaciated valleys by the sea, this maze-like system, running thousands of feet deep, is among the most extensive in the world. Following a safety briefing, we descended to the mudroom in assigned groups for the daily ritual of suiting up in raingear, life jackets, and boots. Dressed in layers, we went from sweltering to cold in the 30-degree wind and rain as we boarded Zodiaks via a side hatch.
Then we were away, our guide Dan Olsen steering the boat through choppy waters toward the Seno de las Montañas fjord and Bernal Glacier. Wading ashore, we hiked through a vegetated area of trees, shrubs, and mosses into an unfolding scene of breathtaking awe. Backed by cloud-enshrouded mountains and fronted by a lagoon of silty turquoise blue meltwaters, the glacier came into view, descending from the massive ice field above.
“Nothofagus,” said Olsen, stopping to show us the tiny leaf of the Southern beech, a genus of 40-plus species of trees and shrubs found throughout the Southern Hemisphere. “Found fossilized in Antarctica, nothofagus is a key piece of evidence supporting the theory of the break-up of the ancient supercontinent of Pangea.”
The education continued as we stood transfixed before the Bernal Glacier. “It’s like a giant bulldozer,” said Olsen, explaining how the push of sediment and rocks yields distinct types of moraine, or glacial till. We also learned how the ice crystals in glaciers absorb longer wavelengths of light while scattering short-waved blue light, producing their signature blue brilliance. Olsen, a career guide and naturalist, exemplified the passion and spirit of the entire expedition team.
Santiago, Chile (Photo by Marianna Lanovska)
Back on board, Lindblad’s photo instructor Dave Katz and renowned National Geographic photographer Drew Rush gave a workshop on smartphone photography. Following our welcome cocktail party and dinner, hosted by entertaining Finnish-born Captain Peik Aalto, we sailed through the night toward our next glacier fjord, where no expedition group had gone before.
In Spanish, “seno” means sound, a body of water fed by the sea or ocean. It can also mean womb or breast, which aptly described Seno Glacier, a serene cradle nestled within a maze of channels and islands. Our guide Guadalupe Canale, a young Argentinian cultural specialist on her first Patagonian program with Lindblad, was a soulful match for the surroundings.
Maneuvering around iceberg fragments known as “bergy bits” and “growlers,” she pointed out waterfalls cascading down imposing mountainsides, Imperial Cormorants nesting on rocky ledges, and below us, the world’s largest continuous kelp forest. Showing us the pneumatocysts, or air sacs, that keep these giants buoyant, Canale explained how these towering brown algae critically sequester carbon, regulate the sea’s PH level, maintain coastal stability, and support marine life.
As if one cue, the larger of two spellbinding glaciers, creaking and groaning as we approached, thunderously calved house-sized chunks of ice into the fjord. Watching this iconic glacial event on National Geographic, Blue Planet, and other shows is impressive enough. Live, it’s titanic.
That night we sailed southwards for the legendary Strait of Magellan. In 1519, Portuguese-born explorer Ferdinand Magellan led a five-ship armada from Spain in search of a western trade route to the Moluccas or “Spice Islands” of eastern Indonesia.
In October 1520, they entered a bay near the eastern tip of South America. Nearly 40 days and 350 miles later, after zigzagging through labyrinthine channels, islands, and bays, he was through to the Pacific Ocean.
Discovery of this transoceanic route profoundly altered the course of history. Until the Panama Canal opened in 1914, the passage would become the main route for steamships traveling from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.
Magellan also gave Patagonia its name. Popular theory holds that after encountering the region’s native Tehuelche people, who were markedly larger than Europeans, he called them Patagónes after a creature from a 1512 Spanish novel.
Completed by Spanish navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano in 1522 after Magellan was killed in 1521, this first circumnavigation of the world is mind-boggling to imagine. Their timber ships were at the mercy of the tides, wind, and weather. They steered by tiller (the navigation wheel wasn’t invented until 1703) and navigated by rudimentary maps, the stars, and dead reckoning. Gripping my balcony railing as we swayed in heavy seas the next dawn, seabirds and sea spray flying all around, the audacity and ambition of the Age of Discovery became acutely apparent.
The Strait of Magellan separates mainland Patagonia from Tierra del Fuego (Land of Fire). Named by Magellan for the bonfires on its shores, our Fuegian destinations included Karukinka Natural Park.
Accessed from Jackson Bay, this vast protected wilderness of mountains, ancient old-growth forest, wetlands, peat bogs, and grassy alpine meadows is privately owned by Goldman Sachs and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) through a unique partnership established in 2004.
Wading ashore in misty rain, we encountered a colony of Southern elephant seals on a rocky beach strewn with driftwood. Giving them wide berth, we embarked on a three-mile hike into a valley straight out of Lord of the Rings.
Sightings of some of Karukinka’s 90 wildlife residents included a Magellanic woodpecker and distant llama-like guanaco. Fascinating flora included Winter’s bark. During English privateer Sir Francis Drake’s stop in Patagonia in 1577 on his global expedition, his captain, William Winter, learned of an evergreen tree bark eaten by indigenous people during the wintertime absence of fruit and vegetables. Purchasing the Drimys winteri bark, he helped his crew stave off scurvy.
That afternoon, we landed in the nearby coastal inlet of Ainsworth Bay and hiked through another enchanting mountain-backed terrain of forest, hanging gardens, waterfalls, and wetlands. Birding highlights included the colorful Patagonian Sierra Finch.
Day four debuted in the heart of Chile’s third-largest national park, Alberto de Agostini, named after an Italian priest who explored the area in the early 1900s. The nearby Darwin mountains, or Cordillera Darwin, pay homage to British naturalist Charles Darwin who spent more than half of his 1831-1836 circumnavigation of the world in the Patagonian region. After passing by spectacular peaks and tidewater glaciers along 11-mile Seno Agostini, we shuttled ashore to another blue-hued giant, the Aguila Glacier.
Spegazzini Glacier in Argentina (Photo by Dmitry Pichugin)
Circling a tidal lagoon, I walked with expedition guide Javier Cotín, a PhD ornithologist whose passion for birds and nature takes him on research and conservation projects around the world. On our trip, his 43rd expedition that year, Cotín, his birding ear, eye, and camera significantly more impressive than mine, chronicled 70 avian species, adding to his life list of 2,817 observed birds. That afternoon, we kayaked in the ice-clogged Seno Hyatt as its behemoth tidewater glacier put on a spectacular calving show.
Our overnight transit took us around Cordillera Darwin to the Beagle Channel. Charted by Captain Robert FitzRoy of the H.M.S. Beagle during the Darwin expedition, these choppy waters offer a more southerly transoceanic route than the Magellan Strait. Following an early cruise into the Seno Garibaldi fjord-glacier, we sailed for Puerto Williams, the world’s southernmost settlement. Bidding Chile farewell, it was east wards into Argentina under celestial skies including the Southern Hemisphere’s famed Southern Cross constellation.
Discovered in 1524 by Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano and colonized by the Dutch in 1661, the NYC borough of Staten Island was George R.R. Martin’s inspiration for fictional Westeros in his Game of Thrones novels. Discovered by Dutch explorers in 1615, ancient Staten Island, 18 miles east of Tierra Del Fuego in the Atlantic, is no less mythical.
Inhabited only by a naval station, Staten Island is 209 square miles of raw geology and nature. Visitation to this official “Ecological, Historic and Tourist Provincial Reserve” is by special access only. We were among the few expeditions ever allowed here, adding rarity and wonder to our final four expeditions over the next two days.
Magellanic Penguin in Patagonia (Photo by Sunsinger)
Combining Argentinian deserts, tablelands, and steppes with Chilean lakes, fjords, glaciers, beaches, and temperate rainforests, this 402,000-square-mile wilderness, parts still undiscovered, is among Earth’s last frontiers.
Restricted to the sea, our expedition to westernmost Franklin Bay was a spectacle of Rockhopper penguins, sea lions, giant petrels, and other wildlife. That afternoon, we roamed desolate Puerto Cook (Captain James Cook visited Staten Island in 1775), which features a haunting graveyard from former penal colony days.
The next morning, 25-year Lindblad veteran Lucho Verdesoto took us out at dawn to Observation Island, northeast of Staten Island. Cue the Game of Thrones theme song: motoring across vast open waters as the sun, rising from behind jagged mountain peaks, painted the sea gold was pure cinema.
Fur seals circled our Zodiaks as we navigated the boisterous waters past rocky cliffs awash in colonies of Magellenic penguins, cormorants, and sea lions. This was nature in the raw, far removed from civilization. The air was thick with the smell of guano. Rare snowy sheathbills and black-faced ibises flew overhead. An escort of darting penguins led us back to the ship. All this before breakfast, an epic start to our last day.
Faro de San Juan de Salvamento Lighthouse Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia Argentina (Photo by Gonzalo Buzonni)
That afternoon, we landed on a pebbled beach in a protected bay at Staten Island’s northeastern tip and hiked through a tree-swept expanse in the blazing sun. At the end of the upward trek stood the replica Faro de San Juan de Salvamento Lighthouse. Built in 1884, the original inspired Jules Verne’s 1905 book The Lighthouse at the End Of the World. Gazing southwards from this lonely promontory, swept up in the emotions of our journey’s nearing end, my thoughts roiled like the seas below.
Out there to the west lay Cape Horn and the Drake Passage, the treacherous open sea route at South America’s tip where the Pacific and Atlantic collide and many shipwrecks lie. Next stop, 900 miles to the south, were Antarctica and the South Pole, with Tasmania and Australia beyond. Was this the end of the world or the beginning?
In his 1939 book Cape Horn, Felix Riesenberg wrote that the region’s “fame began with man’s awakening to the size of the earth…it became the fulcrum of discovery, of conquest and sea trade into the Pacific and to the West.” The Age of Discovery also came with heavy tolls. For thousands of years, indigenous peoples inhabited the Patagonian wilderness as land-based or canoe-faring hunter-gatherers. As we learned from Jackie Windh, a PhD scientist, author and photographer, the European arrivals brought disaster. Disgraces include the genocidal campaign against the Selk’nam people, who were butchered to near extinction. The captured were sent to human zoos in Europe. Darwin, for all his glory, disparaged the Yaghan canoe people as “miserable degraded savages”.
The Age of Discovery also spawned colonialism, and later, the Industrial Revolution, the impacts of which imperil our planet today. At Karukinka, we filled 20 sacks with plastics washed ashore by the tides. Trillions of microplastic fragments from the manufacture of everyday household products poison our oceans and our guts, equivalent to eating 52 credit cards a year.
We also learned how alarming levels of dissolved carbon dioxide are acidifying the oceans. Global warming is accelerating glacial retreat. Glacier ice is the largest reservoir of fresh water on the planet. Melting ice contributes to rising sea levels. This shit is real, and we saw it first-hand at Bernal and other glaciers.
Pandemics, such as the avian flu ravaging the region, are a global interspecies threat, including those gentle-faced elephant seals. Birds are under critical threat from climate change and myriad other harms as global losses and extinctions mount. While cooler waters are keeping Patagonia’s kelp forests healthy for now, warmer waters in other climes are devastating this critical underwater ecosystem.
In 1946, Argentina introduced 50 Canadian beavers to Tierra Del Fuego to start a fur industry. Unchecked by natural predators, 110,000-plus beavers are now chewing up the region, including the decimated forest we saw on Ainsworth Bay.
As Cristobal Arredondo, who leads implementation of the Terrestrial Conservation Program for the WCS in Chile reminded us, our planet is a closed natural system that depends on sustaining biodiversity—destroy that and societies, economies, and all else are doomed.
Experiencing and learning first-hand how Lindblad Expeditions, National Geographic, WCS, and their peer organizations around the world are going all out to reverse these negative tides of change was eminently uplifting. As Lars-Eric Lindblad intended, exposing citizens to Patagonia and other remote wild places informs and encourages a sense of responsibility for protecting and preserving the planet. The values and actions demonstrated by Lindblad’s people throughout our expedition were a source of trust and faith.
Ushuaia, Argentina (Photo by saoko3p)
The journey home began with disembarking in attractive Ushuaia, Argentina’s southernmost city, where we visited the Maritime Museum. From there, I flew to NYC by way of Buenos Aires, adrift in memories for a lifetime: The sanctuary of my cabin, while barely sleeping at all. Standing on my balcony at dawn and at night, enraptured by the song of the sea. Visiting the open bridge and speaking with Guillermo, a former Chilean Navy officer, as he piloted us forward. The festive Filipino dinner prepared by the joyful all-Filipino restaurant team. The group photo show. Rush’s “On Assignment with National Geographic” presentation. Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Barbara Higbie serenading us at the piano on our last night, with Olsen joining in. Lindblad’s seamless operational expertise, freeing me to fully experience every second of my voyage to the End of the World.
I’ve stayed in touch with several people, including Lindblad Expeditions’ vice president of affinity and charter sales Karen Kuttner-Dimitry, affectionately called “KK,” who hosted several lively private receptions and dinners during the voyage.
When I last caught up with Cotín in April 2024, his bird count was up to 3,409 species following trips to Thailand, New Zealand, South Africa, and Madagascar. Retired train engineer Alaric Dalberg and his husband Jay Tayaban, on their fourth Lindblad adventure, were great company. Dalberg’s mother Helen, 87, and her late husband Bill made 38 Lindblad trips together. “Our first voyage, to the Galápagos Islands in 1999, was life-changing,” recalled Helen by phone. “We were hooked.”
Their notable other destinations included Libya, Antarctica, and Arctic Russia’s remote Franz Joseph Land archipelago. They met former Polish president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Lech Walesa on on one trip; Apollo 8 and 13 astronaaut Jim Lovell on another. While sailing in pirate-infested waters in the Seychelles, Lindblad wrapped the decks in triple concertina wire and stationed armed guards.
“Lindblad’s people love what they do, which kept bringing us back, along with their consistent excellence and the exposure to world-class naturalists and photographers,” Helen continued. “I will always treasure our passport stamps with them.”
The scene I would add to my highlight reel at the start of this story was in the bosom of Seno Glacier. “Take a moment to be with the fjord and glacier,” said our young guide Guadalupe Canale, asking for silence. Others kept talking, but I heard her. When our eyes met, our souls connected in unspoken communion with the great outdoor cathedral of rock and ice that surrounded us.
“Out of this world,” I said, emerging from the rapture. “Yes,” replied Canale, “but remember, this is our world, our planet.” No summoning may ever be as talismanic.
