Patagonia 2011

This land has been many things to many people. For Magellan and Drake, it was the land of giants. For FitzRoy, it was the beginning of the end. For Darwin, it was a trip that would change his life. ForJeremy Button, it was his home, then his curse. For St-Exupery, Patagonia was his muse. And forChatwin and Theroux, it became their salvation. For me, this vast land, this million kilometer square of mountains, rivers, canyons, steppes, ocean coasts, and unbelievable skies, Patagonia is where my story began.

For more than 10 years, I tried to follow a path that was unfortunately, doomed from the beginning. You see, back in my childhood days, I would either spend my days on the shore of the St-Lawrence River, meticulously examining each and every tide pool or roaming the forest in search of small and bizarre critters. I was always down on my knees, my head in the water, or digging under a tree or a rock. On my 16th birthday, I received two of my most cherished childhood gifts, two photos, framed, from the famous photographer Talbot – “Flight”, the iconic photo of two dolphins jumping in front of a cargo ship, and “Megaptera”, the amazing tail of  a humpback whale. Back then, if you would have asked me what I wanted to do when I grow up, my answer was, and had been the same for a very long time: “I want to sail around the world and study whales”! In fact, the first time I applied for university was in Marine Biology at the University of British Columbia. On a funny note, I used to watch “Miami Vice” in the late 80’s and envy Sonny Crockett (Don Johnson) because he lived in a marina, on his Endeavor sailboat.

Then, like so many young dreamers, I was told to “Wise Up” and get serious with my life. Listening to the senior council, I put aside those “infantile” ideas of traveling the world’s oceans looking for swimming mammals and enrolled in business and marketing! I still regard that day as the day that I sold my soul. I spent the next 15 years pushing my way into a world that never seemed quite right for me. Every time I felt the weight of the system bringing me down, I would leave everything behind and escape for months on end, disappearing somewhere, closer to nature. Closer to what deep down I was longing for. One time, I spent a summer at Isla Guadalupe in Mexican waters, diving with white sharks.

The last and final straw happened in New York in 2008. After a disastrous short-lived marriage, I finally did what I should have done a long time ago. I was 34 years old and had wasted enough of my precious life. It was time to set the clock back, rewind the tape and press play again. I sold everything, geared up with camping equipment and picked a destination – a far one, far far away! Although initially I wanted to land in the Falklands, with my budget, Patagonia was more of a realistic choice. So on January 2009, I arrived at the Valdes Peninsula, in the Chubut Province, located in northern Patagonia. There, for the first time in over 20 years, I felt alive. And then the most bizarre thing happened. I remember standing on the beach, facing out, it was a particular windy day and no one could be seen anywhere. I started to feel chocked and out of air. So I took a real deep breath, like none I had ever taken before. I felt the air travelling down to my lungs as if it was the first time I was breathing. I felt my lungs opening up, as if it was for the first time. And this sudden feeling of awareness, as if I was unexpectedly waking up after decades of hibernation.

Since then, I have been back every year to this “lugar salvaje”. And as it turns out, precisely every 14 months!! Don’t ask me why, I don’t know, it is only a coincidence…. I think so!  Anyhow, this year, I went back with my partner, photographer Jasmine Rossi. Her own story with Patagonia is also quite something. Working in the financial world of London, she developed a chronic tendinitis and reluctantly took a year off. Fluent in spanish, she decided to visit South America. As she says: “I wanted to get as far away as possible from the intrusions of what we call “civilization”, so I canoed through jungle rivers and rode along Andean trails from Venezuela to Chile…”  Two years later, Jasmine published the first ever in-depth book on the wildlife of the Valdes Peninsula, “The Wild Shores of Patagonia”.

Jasmine needed to photograph certain winter landscapes for the re-edition of her book “The Spirit of Patagonia”. So after persuading Volkswagen to lend us their new Amarok, we drove south for another 6 weeks of adventure. Overall the trip was a success. We got the shots we were after. But the disappointing part was, and it is always the case on most of my trips, to see Man’s impact on Nature.  Read “Land of Savages” and “Polyethylene Sculpture“