Patagonia Blows!

A nightmare trip for our free subscribers! For PAID SUBSCRIBERS it gets even worse.

I told my friend Jeff I was taking a trip to Patagonia. He replied, “Cool. That’s an imaginary place, right?”

My friends think I visit imaginary places.

Patagonia: Travel Poster vs. Reality

His confusion is understandable, because the only reason people visit there is the name: Patagonia. It sounds so mystical. It even inspired a line of sportswear. Patagonia.

Of course, the name loses a little in translation. According to legend, when Magellan first visited here, he saw an Indian’s huge footprint in the snow – the natives stood almost a foot taller than the European invaders. Magellan exclaimed, “These people have feet like ducks!”

Duck in Spanish is ‘pato’. Patagonia just means “Land of People with Duck Feet” -- a terrible name for a sportswear company.

A lot of place names suffer in translation. The Bolshoi Ballet sounds so classy, but bolshoi just means big. Bolshoi Ballet? Big Ballet. Big deal.

Or Spain’s Alhambra: an amazing palace with a romantic name. But Alhambra just means ‘red’. It’s a red building.

You can tell your friends “I just purchased a Bolshoi Alhambra.” Just buy a pack of Big Red chewing gum.

Bolshoi Alhambra.

Patagonia is one of the least-populated spots on the planet. But with its snow-capped mountains, crystal-blue rivers, and sweeping golden plains, there’s no place quite like it. Except Montana. And Colorado. And Utah. And Idaho, I imagine. But Patagonia has one thing they don’t have: persistent gale-force winds. The wind blows all the freaking time, and like Patagonia itself, it blows hard.

(To be honest, the wind stops blowing during the winter, when Patagonia is too cold to visit. But when summer comes and the suckers return, the warm air rises creating a vacuum, which is filled by cold gusting winds from nearby Antarctica. This has inspired my new comedy series ‘It’s Always Sucky in Patagonia’.)

The travel agent who sent us here neglected to mention this. But everyone else couldn’t stop talking about it:

TOUR GUIDE: This was the last place on earth man settled in, due to the persistent gale force winds…

FJORD CRUISE CAPTAIN: There are at least three reasons for Patagonia’s persistent gale force winds…

HOTEL CLERK: You might wear these earplugs in bed to block the noise of the persistent gale force winds…

It’s windy because there’s no other land at this latitude. Even Pangaea knew not to come here. If you don’t believe me, look at a map. Everywhere on earth where there’s land, you’ll find more land at the same latitude: North America has Europe and Asia; South America has Africa and Australia. Patagonia has nada.

Patagonia (in red): Where wind goes on vacation!

All the wind in the lower Southern Hemisphere hits Patagonia, because there is nothing else on earth to stop it. It’s where wind goes on vacation.

Patagonia has lovely glaciers you can cruise by, but to reach the tour boat, you have to walk across a mile-wide valley where the winds gust at eighty MPH. The gales literally blew my mouth open and began inflating me like a party balloon. When I finally reached the boat, the captain told me, “The water’s a little rough today, but don’t worry, we have a plan B.” A few minutes later, the trip was canceled due to (brace yourself) high winds.

“So what’s Plan B?” I asked.

“We have no Plan B,” he replied.

I complained to our travel agent, “Did it slip your mind that this place is in a perpetual hurricane?”

“Oh come on,” she said. “Patagonia is gorgeous, except for the persistent gale force winds…”

I replied, “That’s like saying ‘I booked you into a beautiful hotel… but it’s on fire.”

She chuckled nervously. “No, you’ll love the hotel I got you. Just one thing… It used to be an industrial slaughterhouse.”

PAID SUBSCRIBERS join us next week at this Slaughterhouse Five-Star Hotel.