First saw Patagonia in 1979, when he traveled by thumb to Tierra del Fuego as a shoestring backpacker, and then trekked the Torres del Paine circuit for the first time in 1981 - seeing only three other hikers in ten days. Since 1990, he has returned to the region almost every year, in the course of writing guidebooks for Lonely Planet and, more recently, Moon Handbooks. He lives permanently in California, with his Argentine wife, but owns a car in Chile and an apartment in Buenos Aires.