A DARK intertwine of deep Green fjords stretches beneath us towards the horizon where the confluence of the glacial current merges with the black stillness of the open sea.
Far to the south, where the waves lash Cape Horn's cold granite cliffs, three great oceans: The Pacific, The South Atlantic and The Antarctic meet in a cacophony of restless waters, conflicting winds, turbulent waters and deadly squalls; The stormy heart of the most unpredictable micro-weather system on Earth.
“My Patagonia,” in the words of the Chilean Poet, Mario Miranda Soussi, “Is a landscape of infinite water, torn apart by a torrent of love, navigating a single river swollen by miracles.”
The verdant terrain we are crossing at five hundred feet above the Patagonian rainforest canopy is no less violent – fern covered jurassic mountains crashing into each other, snarling vegetation suffocating the trees, roaring rivers tossing huge boulders and rocks.
Fleetingly we pass over a few small corrugated tin houses, their pillar box red roofs glinting in the late evening sun; Remote dwellings only there, it seems, to show how vast the terrain is; even the mighty Andean Condor, with its three metre wingspan, appears in this landscape no bigger than a humble swallow.
The shadow of the plane that carries us is lost on the side of an enormous glacier as, without warning, we begin to lose altitude. As the single prop dips and weaves in the soaring thermals we approach the tree line, cutting the uppermost branches off a soaring 200 year old pine tree, as we hurtle towards the dusty runway.
Our pilot is Doug Tompkins, the most controversial American in South America, a multi-millionaire conservationist who has spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying up a Northern Ireland sized slice of Patagonia, a man who through a series of grand purchase has practically split one of the world’s longest countries in two.