End of the Earth.

It's been over a month since I left the stinky confines of Buenos Aires and traveled to the end of the Earth for ten days of fresh air and natural beauty in the famously dramatic landscapes of Patagonia at the furthest end of the continent of South America.  Little did I know the profound effect it would have on the deepest parts of my being as I realized I was in the most beautiful place I have ever been; my own personal paradise.  I found myself unable to express in words the beauty that surrounded me in the towns and mountains I visited.  These photos taken with my crappy little digital camera certainly do no justice to how wonderful of a place Patagonia is, but as the famous saying goes "A picture is worth a thousand words".  In this case, these pictures are only a few of what I took in order to replace the loss for words I experienced in this most stunning of landscapes that the planet is hiding in its southernmost reaches.

It's no mystery that the Patagonian Andes are full of enormous glaciers.  Yes people, I, a hater of all things snow and cold, willingly visited a 2.5 mile wide glacier and watched pieces of ice the size of a house break and fall into the water as this tremendous river of ice advances at a snails pace.  The resounding "BOOM" that echoed throughout the mountain sides as the pieces of ice broke and fell was enough to send chills through my body even on the warmest of Patagonian days.

There is a quality to the sky in Patagonia that is difficult to describe.  The clouds were the lowest and closest to the land I've ever seen.  The sky literally sits right on top of you; at times I felt I could reach up and touch the clouds.  It was as though the sky hugs the earth, hanging on as close as it can in order not to fall off the end of the planet into outer space.

Typical Patagonian landscape: seemingly endless shrubby and grassy rolling hills, lonely roads, whilst in the distance loom the most daunting and dramatic of Andean peaks, beckoning all dreamers.

If El Chaltén is in this direction, I'm there!  Could this be any more gorgeous?

It is the texture of the landscape that I found to be so unbelievable, so otherworldly.  The way in which the grasses and shrubs grow, the texture of the rocks and hills, the meandering streams slowly fed by enormous glaciers, the trees changing in autumn with their wind-whipped branches.  I didn't know that texture of landscape is something I would ever be so enamored with.  This is where the lack of words begins to overcome me and sheer emotion consumes me. . . 

Nothing says "End of the Earth" quite like a rusted out Dodge and a lonely power line.

Patagonia is known for its ever-changing weather, which on this day slightly obscured my view of the famous Fitz Roy peak.  It's not as though it takes away from the beauty in any way and, in fact, adds to the mystery of what it must be like up there.

 Seriously?  Kill me now, I'm already in heaven.