“Why then, and this is not only my particular case, does this barren land possess my mind? I find it hard to explain…but it might partly be because it enhances the horizons of imagination.” – Charles Darwin.

Aside from a precious few tourist havens and industrial centers, Santa Cruz Province is an immense swath of parched, lonely land where wild animals and a few tough inhabitants eek out an equally tough existence. But within this inhospitable region one also finds a land of desolate beauty and dramatic contrasts, where angry spires of barren rock and icy peaks give way to a seemingly never-ending horizon of harsh, semi-desert steppe that extends several hundred kilometers all the way to the bleak Atlantic coastline. This is indeed Big Sky country – Patagonia style.

 Simply enduring the utter emptiness and natural ruggedness of this frontier region, which has a population density comparable to the Sahara Desert, is in many ways the very essence of the Patagonian experience. Wrested from its native inhabitants barely over a century ago, much of this remote badland is still unknown to the outside world. Perhaps for these very reasons, the austral landscape of Santa Cruz seems to captivate the imagination unlike any other portion of Patagonia.

Rodrigo Amadeo:
Fly Fishing Guide - Santa Cruz River