trekking guide book - Torres del Paine - Chile - South America

• Location
• Description
• Contents
• Introduction
• Sample Route
• Maps
• Reviews
• Further Reading

Trekking and mountaineering guidebooks
Randonnées Chiliennes by Dominique Argenson (Apostrophes Ediciones, 2003) has a good selection of day walks around Santiago. Salto Grande Sendero de Interpretación (CONAF, no date) is a nice little booklet on Salto Grande, though getting fairly hard to find. For those planning a trip to Aconcagua there is Jim Ryan’s Aconcagua and the Southern Andes – A Trekkers Guidebook (Cicerone, 2nd edition 2009), which also has details of hikes close to Santiago. The Andes: A Trekking Guide by John & Cathy Biggar (Andes, 2nd edition 2001) is an excellent guide to over 30 treks throughout the Andes, including several in Patagonia. Trekking in the Andes by Val Pitkethly & Kate Harper (New Holland, 2nd edition 2008) is another excellent guide, covering 26 treks and 18 climbing routes in the Andes, including several in Chile and Argentina (New Holland, 2008). Lonely Planet’s Trekking in Patagonia includes a section on Torres del Paine. John Biggar’s The Andes: A Guide for Climbers by (Andes, 3rd edition 2005) is a comprehensive guide to climbing throughout the Andes on over 300 peaks including all the 6000ers. For further details on hiking in Argentina’s Los Glaciares national park, see Colin Henderson’s Los Glaciares National Park – Travel and Trekking Guide (Zager & Urruty, 2007), and Trekking en Chaltén by Miguel Alonso (Spanish and English, Zagier & Urruty, 1998).

General guidebooks
Of the many general guides available, the Rough Guide Chile and Moon Handbooks Chile are very reliable and informative.

Travel, exploration and mountaineering
There are numerous works on the early exploration of Patagonia and later mountaineering: Charles Darwin’s Journal of researches into the geology and natural history of the various countries visited by H.M.S. Beagle, better known through later editions as Voyage of the Beagle (Henry Colburn, 1839; Penguin, 1989); Francisco Moreno, Viaje a la Patagonia Austral (Buenos Aires, 1879); Lady Florence Dixie, Across Patagonia (London, 1880); Julius Beerbohm, Wanderings in Patagonia (1879; repr. Nonsuch 2005); W.H. Hudson, Idle Days in Patagonia (London, 1893; repr. Nonsuch 2005); George C. Musters, At Home with the Patagonians (London, 1871; repr. Nonsuch 2005); Alberto de Agostini, Andes Patagónicos. Viajes de Exploracion a la Cordillera Patagonica Austral (Buenos Aires, 1941); Walter Bonatti, Solitudini Australi (Club Alpino Italiano, Torino, 1999).

Eric Shipton, Land of Tempest. Travels in Patagonia 1958–62 (London, 1963) describes the author’s epic crossing of the Southern Ice Field, and H.W. Tilman’s Mischief in Patagonia (Cambridge, 1937) recounts his east–west crossing from his boat, ‘Mischief’. Walter Bonatti’s The Mountains of My Life (Modern Library, 2001) also has sections dealing with Patagonia, and Simon Yates’ Against the Wall (Vintage, 1998) recounts an attempt on Torre Central. There’s also Alan Kearney, Mountaineering in Patagonia (The Mountaineers, 1993).

Best-known of all travel books on Patagonia is Bruce Chatwin’s hugely influential In Patagonia (London, 1977) – which you can place nicely into context by visiting Cueva del Milodón near Torres del Paine, and passing by the house in Punta Arenas where his great-uncle, Charley Milward, once lived; more recently there is Sara Wheeler, Travels in a Thin Country (London, 1994).

Perhaps the finest book on Patagonia, however, is Lucas Bridges’ Uttermost Part of the Earth (London, 1948; repr. Century, 1987), a heartfelt and deeply moving account of the author’s early life and exploration in Tierra del Fuego, his contact with the local Fuegian tribes, and their gradual, inevitable submergence beneath the approaching tide of ‘civilization’. If you only take one book with you on your travels to Patagonia, make it this one.

History and ethnography
S. Collier & W. Sater, A History of Chile, 1801–1994 (Cambridge, 2004); S. Villalobos, A Short History of Chile (Santiago, 1996); Mateo Martinic, Brief History of the Land of Magellan (Punta Arenas, 2002); Chris Moss, Patagonia. A Cultural History (Landscapes of the Imagination series, Signal Books, Oxford 2008); Colin McEwan, Luis Alberto Borrero & Alfredo Prieto, History, Prehistory and Ethnography at the Uttermost End of the Earth (London, BM Press, 1997); Nick Reding, The Last Cowboys at the End of the World – The Story of the Gauchos of Patagonia (Crown, 2001).

Folklore, myths and legends
Mario Echeverría Baleta, Tehuelche Life and Legends (trans. C.A. Fox, Punta Arenas, 2003); J. Wilbert & K. Simoneau, Folk Literature of the Tehuelche Indians (Los Angeles, 1984).

Literature and poetry
Pablo Neruda, Selected Poems – A Bilingual Edition (Jonathan Cape, 1970; Penguin, 1975) is a good introduction to the work of Chile’s Nobel Prize winning poet. A good collection of Gabriela Mistral’s poetry is Selected Poems (University of New Mexico Press, 2003); Mistral was the first Latin American writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Many of Ariel Dorfman’s works have been translated into English, including his most famous play, Death and the Maiden, and the autobiographical Heading South, Looking North. Isabelle Allende’s novels translated into English include The House of the Spirits and Eva Luna.

Language
Dictionaries and phrasebooks include Chilenismos: A Dictionary and Phrasebook for Chilean Spanish (Hippocrene NY, 2005), by Daniel Joelson, and the Rough Guide’s Latin American Phrasebook (Rough Guide, 2006). Language courses include Teach Yourself Latin American Spanish (Teach Yourself Books, 2003). Oxford and Collins both publish good pocket-sized English–Spanish dictionaries.

One of the most famous books on the language of the Fuegian Indians is Yamana–English, a unique and fascinating lexicon written over many years by the Rev. Thomas Bridges, father of Lucas Bridges (who went on to write Uttermost Part of the Earth). The only manuscript of the book was stolen by the polar explorer Frederick Cook, lost during two world wars in Europe, and finally discovered in a farmhouse kitchen cupboard, and now resides in the British Library.

Photographs
Among the many photographic works on the wild landscapes of southern Chile and Patagonia are Hubert Stadler & Michael Allhof, Patagonia (C.J. Bucher Verlag, 2006); Marcos Zimmermann, Patagonia: Nature’s Last Frontier (New Holland, 2007); and Daniel Rivademar & Alejandro Winograd, Patagonia: Land of Giants (Island Press, 2004).

Wildlife and plants
An excellent (though somewhat expensive given its size) all-round guide to wildlife, birds and plants of the national park is Gladys Garay & Oscar Guineo, Fauna, Flora y Montaña Torres del Paine (English/Spanish, Punta Arenas, 2006). This is an expanded and updated form of the same authors’ earlier work (covering animals and birds only), Conociendo la Fauna de Torres del Paine/The Fauna of Torres del Paine (Punta Arenas, 1997).

Sharon Chester, A Wildlife Guide to Chile: Continental Chile, Chilean Antarctica, Easter Island, Juan Fernandez Archipelago (Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 2008) is an outstanding general guide to the natural history of Chile – from birds and mammals to butterflies, fish and plant life.

Bird-watchers are well catered for, since there are some truly excellent field guides available. Top of the list are Alvaro Jaramillo, Peter Burke & David Beadle, Birds of Chile: Including the Antarctic Peninsular, the Falkland Islands and South Georgia (Helm Field Guides, 2003; Princeton University Press, 2003); and Martín R de la Peña & Maurice Rumboll, Birds of Southern South America and Antarctica (Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 2008; originally published as Collins Illustrated Checklist: Birds of Southern South America and Antarctica, Collins, 1998).

Another handy guide, also easily obtainable in Chile, is Enrique Couve & Claudio F. Vidal, Birds/Aves Torres del Paine. Guía de Campo/Field Guide (English/Spanish; second edition, Editorial Fantástico Sur, Punta Arenas, 2004, repr. 2007) – though it doesn’t match the Princeton and Helm guides mentioned above.
Now out of print, Graham Harris, A Guide to the Birds and Mammals of Coastal Patagonia (Princeton, 1998) is another more general guide to the area.

Lapidatrists are directed to Luis E. Peña G. and Alfredo J. Ugarte P., Las Mariposas de Chile/The Butterflies of Chile (out of print; Editorial Universitaria, Santiago, 1996), if they can find a copy; or the relevant section of Sharon Chester’s book. Butterflies and other insects are listed on www.insectos.cl (Spanish language only).

For plants in Torres del Paine, the most easily obtainable field guide is Osvaldo Vidal O., Flora Torres del Paine. Guía de Campo/Field Guide (English/Spanish; Editorial Fantástico Sur, Punta Arenas, 2007). CONAF produces a series of small guides to Chilean trees and other plants (and animals), in theory available from their office in Santiago, though in practice frustratingly difficult to obtain.

There are also some very useful websites dedicated to the plantlife of Chile. These include Enciclopedia del la Flora Chilena, www.florachilena.cl (Spanish), and Chilebosque, www.chilebosque.cl (Spanish, some parts in English). Most useful of all, however, is Chileflora, www.chileflora.com (English, with an excellent search page).