Quote:
Originally Posted by *Touring Ted*
I'll compare my first trip through Patagonia in 2007 to my last trip only last year.
Where in 2007 there were very few moto travellers and if you saw another you would instantly pull over and exchange conversation and maybe try and meet up down the road. Now there are HUNDREDS of riders. Mostly in groups or on tours. It's like a Sunny Summer's day in North Wales. You just nod and carry on. It's harder to get away from other riders than it is to find them.
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I've just been 'dissecting' Bruce Chatwin's 'In Patagonia' book for an academic course I'm doing and I did wonder how things how things had changed between 1974 when he was there and more recent times. Sounds like the place has been 'discovered' in the last decade or two.
I guess it's the way a lot of these places go when the tourism industry sees an opportunity. Back in the early 70's we spent a month in Corfu on the back end of Gerald Durrell's book 'My family and Other Animals', and spent weeks camping up on an empty beach in the north of the island. The package tour world has now claimed the place for their own and I don't think you'd get away with putting a tent up there these days. Before and after pictures below.
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