In November I spent three weeks volunteering in an organic vegetable garden in Parque Patagonia. The park is owned by the Tompkins Foundation and will eventually be donated to the Chilean state to form part of a larger national park. The garden provides vegetables to the restaurant in the park and the volunteer program not only helps them along the road to becoming self sufficient but also educates people on the importance of food sustainability. I’ve been really lucky to have had the chance to work here and I’ve loved every second of it. 

I’ve wanted to come to Patagonia ever since seeing it for the first time in the snowboarding movie Art of Flight back in 2011 which is what got me thinking about this trip to South America in the first place. You can imagine that when the time finally came to head South I was pretty excited.  I took a flight from Santiago to Balmaceda on November 9th and grabbed a transfer to a town called Coyhaique where I needed to spend a night before catching a bus to the park. I’d been in contact with the other volunteers arriving at the same time as me and met Sofia that evening for dinner. The town is tiny, surrounded by mountains and has an excellent pizza restaurant called Mamma Gauchos.

The journey the next day took 7 hours and was probably the most beautiful bus ride I’ve ever taken. We collected Ethan, the other volunteer, about halfway down. We got off the bus on the side of the main road where Francisco, the guy who runs the garden, was waiting to drive us the last 10km to the park. We met the five current volunteers – three would leave over the next few days while two, Grace and Frannie, would stay the next three weeks with us.

As we arrived on a Thursday we had three free days to get our bearings before starting work on the following Monday. We went on a few hikes, saw a few lakes and got to grips with the running of the park. The kitchen cooked three meals a day for the workers and our campsite was about 2.5km from the restaurant and garden.

Once work started time really began to fly. The work was physically tough but I loved it. We did all sorts including digging new beds, planting seeds and harvesting veggies and leaves. 

At every meal we ate like it might be our last and every evening I hit my tent before dark and slept 9 or 10 hours. At the weekends we hiked and cooked nice dinners. We had a pizza night, a birthday bbq for Frannie and a thanksgiving meal which involved 8 hours of preparation and was demolished in about 15 minutes.

On our last Sunday, post thanksgiving food coma, four of us got up to hike over the mountain behind our campsite to the nearby town of Cochrane. I’d wanted to go the previous weekend but as no one else was interested and I would have been alone my boss made me promise I wouldn’t go. There’s no official trail, apparently it’s very easy to get lost and there are lots of pumas in the park. We tried to get directions from lots of different people before setting off but these were all vague at best. We made it over the top of the pass after three hours but couldn’t find a trail. All we could see below us was forest and two streams, one to the left and one to the right. We flipped a coin and followed the one on the left…..through the forest…..for almost 5 hours. I understood why I’d been advised against going alone. I’d have gone a bit mad in the woods if I hadn’t had company. We were pretty battered and a bit bloody by the time we rocked into town after 9.5 hours of walking through the woods which were very dense in places. The victory meal was sweet – fries and eggs for me, steak for everyone else. We still had to get back to the park and after trying to hitch a ride for quite a while and being passed by lots of unfriendly tourists with lots of space in their pickups we were eventually picked up by a nice local who brought us to the entrance of the park where Francisco collected us. Sleep that night was divine.

Now that I’ve finished up at the park I’m excited to be moving even further South to Puerto Natales. Grace and I are currently on a boat with her friend Kourtney. It’s a 41 hour journey through the fjords. I can see tiny icebergs and earlier three dolphins swam across the front of the boat. The beauty of this place floors me every single day and I feel incredibly lucky to be experiencing it.