Kris Tompkins travel tips

“Over the last 200 years, we humans have moved away from our daily and direct interaction with the natural world—even though we know this slowly evolving predicament is perilous for our survival,” writes Kris Tompkins.

Hidden beneath an overhang on steep cliff walls above the Pinturas River Canyon are more than 800 stencilled handprints and painted images of animals. Nobody fully understands why Patagonia’s nomadic hunter-gatherers crafted the graffiti, but we do know they were created around 9,300 years ago using mineral pigments mixed with blood and fat, and that they provide a glimpse of early life in the glacier-carved province of Santa Cruz.  

Chile has long lured the intrepid traveller but in 2018 things stepped up a level. The newly created Route of Parks – a string of Patagonian national parks – links up the country’s most remote corners, from snow-tipped volcanoes to blue-tinged hanging glaciers. Steph Dyson reports from the road.

In this episode of The Rough Guide to Everywhere, we travel to Latin America to hear from two of the world's most ambitious and outspoken eco-pioneers.

Last week something remarkable happened: a new national park was born in Chile. The million-acre Parque Pumalín was, in a previous life, defunct farmland, but a 25-year rewildling project has slowly turned the region into a haven for wildlife.