Volcanoes, glaciers, endless plains: The name Patagonia evokes freedom, wilderness, adventure – but does this rugged land live up to its name? The answer lies in this tale of wind, shards of ice, never-ending bus rides and Maradona’s soccer strip.

This is the place that the wind calls home. Rushing in from the icy wastes of Antarctica, it piles up seething waves in the Beagle Channel and charges on over the Andean foothills until there is nothing left to hold it back. It races through the mountains and on to the plains, where it sweeps through the pampas grass, shakes the trees and ruffles the wooly fleeces of the grazing guanacos. Finally, it swoops up into the clouds above the Cuernos del Paine, the horn-like peaks of Torres del Paine National Park, until a moment ago still obscured by what appeared to be a wall of cotton batting. Finding a gap, the wind penetrates the white swathes, nudging, pushing, and within the space of five minutes totally dispersing them. And now? After all the days and kilometers you have traveled through Patagonia, you find yourself sitting quite lost for words, yet again, as you gaze across at the mountaintops. All that’s missing is a dramatic movie-style fanfare to highlight the moment.

At the end of the world, you will find a jersey worn by the man who once needed the “hand of God.” It is displayed in a glass case behind the bar of a pub called “Dublin” down by the harbor and was “signed by Maradona himself,” the barkeeper proudly declares. He can say this in Spanish and English, and also in Italian and German. To Maradona! To Diego! Salud! Twenty years ago, only a few passing trekkers would raise their glasses here, but since then business has been booming. Now tourists from Antarctic cruise ships stand three and four deep at the bar, straining for a glimpse of this piece of Argentine soccer memorabilia. Ushuaia’s population, too, has doubled since then to almost 60,000, despite its remote location.

If any town can truly be said to be at the very end of the world, then that town is Ushuaia. On sunny days, Argentina’s most southerly town seems to be Tierra del Fuego’s answer to San Francisco; on bad days, it apparently stands at the gateway to hell’s laundry room. That’s when the ocean rages around the piers in the bay, clouds roll in off the mountains, and everyone heads for shelter, preferably the pub – as soon as it opens.

When it comes to getting around in this part of the world, buses are definitely your best option. They will take you just about anywhere: over mountains and across borders, even across the sounds, riding pickaback on local ferries. But at the very least, they will take you over the rough roads that in western Europe would be deemed fit only for farm vehicles.

As a passenger, there are two ways to spend the 27 hours between Ushuaia and Puerto Natales: You can either watch a stream of Spanish videos on the TV screen above the driver’s seat, or gaze out the window. Not that there’s anything much to see, hour after interminable hour. The landscape slides by like a highly elitist experimental movie. No wildlife, no plants, and least of all humans to be seen far and wide. That’s what makes the bus a great place to reflect – on the myths around Patagonia perhaps.

Patagonia’s mythical reputation is inspired not so much by the steppes and mountains, by the raging wind, and the waves that crash against the quay wall, but by all of those other indefinable qualities. By the things you imagined vaguely before starting out that you still can’t really put your finger on now that you’re here, but somehow know for sure that they have something to do with windswept hair and salt spray on your face. With the whinny of horses and the shadow of a condor soaring high overhead. With the glittering blue of a glacier face, the dull thud of hooves on the grassy steppe, and the molten crimson corridor conjured onto a mountain lake by the sun as it hangs low in the sky.

“What size? Maybe this long… “ The ranger indicates the size with his thumb and index finger. But it’s not really their size that matters, he says, it’s their speed. The people on the observation platform look bewildered: Why their speed? The ranger lifts his thumb and index finger to his forehead. “When a shard of ice hits your head in slow motion, you get away with a scratch. If it’s moving at 150 kilometers an hour, it becomes lodged in your skull.” He waits a beat. “Then you’re dead.” The people on the platform nod, they get the point (no pun intended.)

On the final day of the journey, the weather behaves as though the four seasons had got together for a party, boozed for days on end and were still pretty much the worse for wear. At the Seno Otwas penguin colony, at least, you can expect to see hail, snow, and pouring rain all within the space of an hour – and in between, the sun will blaze hot enough to give you your first sun burn. Then suddenly the wind will get up again and the rain will begin to pelt down in big, heavy drops that gradually turn into tiny blades of ice and, luckily, fall very slowly. And maybe just because it looks so good against a sky of violet cloud, a rainbow will arch above the ocean. If only it weren’t so cold, you would sit down among the penguins, drink a brandy with them and join them in gazing at the sky.