Patagonia - online puzzles

Patagonia ( Spanish pronunciation: [pataˈɣonja]) is a sparsely populated region at the southern end of South America, shared by Argentina and Chile. The region comprises the southern section of the Andes Mountains, lakes, fjords, and glaciers in the west and the deserts to the east. Patagonia is bounded by the Pacific Ocean on the west, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and many bodies of water that connect them like the Strait of Magellan, the Beagle Channel and the Drake Passage to the south.

The Colorado and Barrancas Rivers, which run from the Andes to the Atlantic, are commonly considered the northern limit of Argentine Patagonia. The archipelago of Tierra del Fuego is sometimes included as part of Patagonia. Most geographers and historians locate the northern limit of Chilean Patagonia at Huincul Fault, in Araucanía Region.

Etymology

The name Patagonia comes from the word patagón, which was used by Magellan in 1520 to describe the native tribes of the region, whom his expedition thought to be giants. The people he called the Patagons are now believed to have been the Tehuelches, who tended to be taller than Europeans of the time.Argentine researcher Miguel Doura observed that the name Patagonia possibly derives from the ancient Greek region of modern Turkey called Paphlagonia, possible home of the patagon personage in the chivalric romances Primaleon printed in 1512, 10 years before Magellan arrived in these southern lands. This hypothesis was published in a 2011 New Review of Spanish Philology report.

Population and land area

Largest cities

Physical geography

Argentine Patagonia is for the most part a region of steppe - like plains, rising in a succession of 13 abrupt terraces about 100 m (330 ft) at a time, and covered with an enormous bed of shingle almost bare of vegetation.