For a lot of us, the opportunity to visit Patagonia comes but once. And, no matter how matter-of-fact you are … no matter just how practical and “normal” your existence is, it will change you. Its rivers will become your fly fishing life blood. Its vistas will be your foundation for comparison for years to come.
Its fish will haunt your soul.
Italian Francesco Grigori Di Bene can attest to that. Upon touching down in San Martin de los Andes, Bene’s frame of mind switched from that of being a tourist to that of being a tour guide—Patagonia is simply to magical to keep yourself, and Bene captures it beautifully in the short film below.
My sole trip to Argentina’s northern Patagonia region clearly altered my previously prescribed reality—every brown trout I catch these days is compared to the fish I sight-casted to in rivers like the Malleo and the Collon Curra, or the biggest brown I’ve ever brought to hand in the Limay. Every magical view I take in is instantly compared to the sight of Lanin Volcano towering over the araucaria trees in the ashy desert below. Places change you. Bene is changed, just as I am.
Just as you will be if you ever make the trip.
— Chris Hunt