Atlantic Patagonia

Atlantic Patagonia is where the low windswept pampas meet the ocean. It's a land of immense panoramic horizons and a coastline of bays, inlets, and peninsulas teeming with seabirds and marine wildlife. The region is most famous for Península Valdés, a UNESCO Natural World Heritage site where travelers can see southern right whales, orcas, southern elephant seals, and sea lions. As in the rest of Patagonia, there are seemingly endless dirt roads where you won't see another person or vehicle for hours, only guanacos, rheas, and other animals running across the steppe.

The human history of this region began with the native Tehuelches who fished and hunted the coast and pampas and whose spears and arrowheads are still found along riverbeds and beaches. The first Spanish explorer, Hernando Magallanes, arrived in Golfo Nuevo in 1516, and was followed by several other Spanish expeditions throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. From 1826 to 1836, two English captains, Parker King, of the Adventure, and Robert Fitzroy, sailing the Beagle, made the first accurate nautical maps of the region.

Inland, a Welsh pioneer named Henry Jones explored the Chubut river valley in 1814. Fifty years later, a small group of Welsh families—fleeing religious persecution in Great Britain—became the first Europeans to move to this area permanently, clearing the way for waves of Welsh immigrants that forged colonies in Gaiman, Trelew, Rawson, and Puerto Madryn. Beginning in the mid-19th century, the Argentinean government courted settlers from all over Europe, including Italy, Spain, and Germany, as well as Boers from South Africa, offering land ownership as a strategy for displacing indigenous populations and fortifying the young nation against neighboring Chile. These settlers adapted their agrarian traditions to the Patagonian terrain, planting windbreaks of Lombardy poplar, along with fruit trees and flower gardens. They set up dairy farms, sheep ranches, and continued their cultural traditions and cuisine, such as Welsh Tea, still found throughout Atlantic Patagonia today.

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