PATAGONIA IN FALL

A journey through wind, stone, and silence — across the far south of the continent.

May 25, 2024 — off to Patagonia. It’s spring in Germany, but I’m flying into fall. After nearly 25 hours of travel, we arrive in Punta Arenas, way down in southern Chile. Why I’m here? Supposedly to study rocks. But of course, it’s more than that.

It’s about habitats — sea lions, penguins, seabirds. About shapes and textures: cliffs, glaciers, wind-bent trees, unfamiliar plants. I’m traveling with a team of artists and rock builders who are creating the new South America habitat at Leipzig Zoo. Two pickups, four people – and a lot of kilometers ahead.

We drive north from Punta Arenas into Torres del Paine, past guanacos and storm clouds, through the wide-open Pampa of Argentina, and into Chile’s Aysén region. In Puerto Río Tranquilo, we visit the Marble Caves on Lake General Carrera — stunning, otherworldly stone formations shaped by water and time. Then we cross back east, to Monte León National Park on the Atlantic, follow the coastline along the Strait of Magellan, and return to where we started.

What stays with me: the vastness, the shifting light, the silence. And the overwhelming colors and impressions that later demanded to be captured in drawings.

Out of these impressions grew Patagonia in Fall — a perpetual calendar you can find in my SHOP.