Deep Patagonia
Fly to the bottom of the world, turn left and continue right to the end of the road, driving for an hour on the bumpy dirt track to the end of the lake, and you’ll get to the 100 year-old Patagonian lodge of Helsingfors, the best of Patagonia’s remote lodges.
Founded as a working estancia on the shores of Lake Viedma in 1917, Helsingfors has for the last 15 years welcomed visitors to its amazing location. The rooms are cosy and comfortable and the food’s pretty good, but it’s the scenery and the guides that make this my favourite place from which to experience Patagonia’s immense out-of-scale landscape of lakes and mountains. It’s high end without being the slightest bit plush. They have the best guides I’ve seen; besotted with the place and deeply knowledgeable about every flower, plant, bird and strange mammal thereabouts. It’s run as a luxury lodge but can’t seem to shake off its past as a working farm, and is wonderfully down-to-earth—no phone, no internet, no TV. Dress code: woolly sweaters.
There are just eight rooms, so you’ll be sharing with about 10-14 people. Excursions take place every morning and afternoon and range from pretty gentle hikes along the lake, to superb treks up the mountain to tarns up in the heights graced by overhanging glaciers. They also have horses, fly-fishing, and they take advantage of their lakeside location to run zodiac trips to the massive Viedma glacier (much bigger than the better known Perito Moreno) when the wind permits (which to be frank it rarely does).
To enjoy Patagonia properly, I’d skip El Calafate, Perito Moreno and its hoards of people, and come here for four nights, before heading to El Chalten to go walking
Jack Dancy is a Trufflepig partner and trip planner who loves a good escape from his home of Paris. He likes an escape from civilization altogether even better.
