Travel to South America

Moon Handbooks Patagonia: Including the Falkland Islands (Moon Handbooks Patagonia)

Format: Paperback
Author: Wayne Bernhardson
ReleaseDate: 10 October, 2005
Publisher: Avalon Travel Publishing, Moon Handbooks
Rating:

Interesting but some problems
The author made that harder by including topics that aren't really "Patagonia" and this has helped to create a book that is larger than I would want to carry. Patagonia is of course a large area and trying to cover it in a single book is a challenge. There is a lot of space dedicated to Buenos Aires and Santiago, presumably because a foreign visitor might spend time there as well as in places further south. But the book space could have been better used sticking to the point. The author includes the Chilean Lake District under the "Patagonia" banner, which most Chileans don't seem to think is appropriate (unless they are marketing something in the Lakes, and want the Patagonia cachet). There is mention of Cochamó (east of Puerto Montt) and although elsewhere in the book much is made of the Butch Cassidy connection to Patagonia, nothing is said about how Cochamó played into the lives of the Wild Bunch, since this place was visited often by them and served as the port from which their cattle were shipped to northern Chile. I was pleased to see our store (World's End) mentioned for Puerto Natales, but surprised to see the author's mention of high-speed internet. When we did have some PCs for client use (no longer - that was prior to my arrival in 2001) they were certainly low-speed. Anyway, for the past several years there have been many decent ciber-café places in town. There are other errors surrounding Natales, including the description of the post office being at the southwest corner of the plaza (it's to the east of the plaza). The name of Last Hope Sound is improperly associated with Spanish colonial governor Sarmiento de Gamboa in the Natales chapter (it was Ladrilleros who did the exploring and naming). And throughout the rest of the book there is similar (and crazier) evidence of fact-checking shortcomings. Some serious and significant information about Ruta 40 (Argentine side) is in error regarding distances and fuel availability. For example, the book says Bajo Caracoles is the only gas for nearly 500 km, but in one direction it is just 128 or so km to fuel (at Perito Moreno) and about 336 km to fuel at Tres Lagos, in the other direction, and these fuel points have been that way for many years. Similar problems plague this book, but it still has a lot of useful material, inaccuracies notwithstanding. .

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