Hi and welcome to a new episode of Women Who Travel.

I'm Lale Arakoglu, and today I'm taking us to one of my favorite places in the world,

and somewhere that I've spoken about on this podcast before.

It's wild, it's remote,

with spectacular landscapes and some of the world's most unpredictable weather.

It's Patagonia, home to glaciers and the Andes,

deserts and rainforests,

almost all of which has been protected by the creation of national parks in huge

areas of Chile and Argentina.

If you buy a Picasso and you hang it in your living room, you and your family can enjoy it.

But if you take that same Picasso and you donate it to MoMA or any place really around the world,

millions of people will see that every year and be informed by it, entertained by it. Doug and I decided that whatever land

we bought, we would return it to the country in the form of a new national park for exactly

that reason. That's how Chris Tompkins, an American conservationist who is the subject of a new

National Geographic documentary, describes her philosophy when it comes to restoring the wild

beauty of Patagonia and beyond.

For three decades, her foundation, Tompkins Conservation, has been protecting and creating

nearly 15 million acres of parkland.

Last year, I saw some of this work firsthand when I went to part of Northern Patagonia and Chile,

only 10 kilometres from the Argentine border. My destination? A village that's known for its

adventure tourism, hiking and whitewater rafting.

Here's a recorded clip of my own journey to and across a section of this giant region,

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