The thing that has always struck me about Patagonia is how impossibly vast it seems. Seen from the Argentinean side, the sawtooth peaks of the Andes tower over the western horizon. It is a land of giant condors, 100,000-acre estancias, guanacos (the high-desert cousins of the alpaca and the llama) that lope along with the fluid grace of Kentucky Thoroughbreds, succulent grass-fed steaks grilled over a wood fire, muscular Malbec wines, and—what first attracted me 35 years ago—big trout.
After a two-year pandemic layoff, last month I returned to Patagonia with my fishing partner, Will Hereford, for a fly-fishing pilgrimage that started in the mountains just south of Esquel—the terminus of the Patagonia Express and an inviting target for early-20th-century train robbers, Butch Cassidy among them.
