Patagonia Express

Luis Sepúlveda's many thousands of readers are already familiar with his great passion: traveling, wandering the world, observing its people, and listening to their stories. But Sepúlveda also has another passion, one might say symbiotic with the first, which is to tell, in his own way, those stories he has heard and others that, thanks to his boundless capacity for storytelling, enrich reality, transforming it into literature. This time, Sepúlveda invites us to accompany him, side by side, on some of his journeys through the solitary lands of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. Thus, we meet Ladislao Eznaola, a sea wanderer in search of a ghost ship; his brother Agustín, the bard of Patagonia; Jorge Díaz and the Voice of Patagonia on Radio Ventisquero; the tenderness of Panchito and his dolphin; and crazed aviators who transport everything from wine to corpses across the desolate vastness of the landscape. The book opens and closes with two extraordinary encounters between the author and Bruce Chatwin, and with Francisco Coloane, the Chilean writer who fueled the restless imagination of the young Sepúlveda. Travel notes, yes, but also a lesson in how to travel, how to know the world, how to see it and love it. Luis Sepúlveda, in a way, extends the tradition he learned from the books of his mentor Coloane and tries to infect us with the immense joy of true adventure. It is no coincidence that Patagonia Express ends with the following words: “I would never be alone again.” Coloane had passed on to me his ghosts, his characters, the Indians and emigrants from all latitudes who inhabit Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, his sailors and his sea vagabonds. They all go with me and allow me to say aloud that living is a magnificent exercise.