Some locals probably read a description of their home town and had a good laugh for how off the mark it was. Maybe we happened to pull into town and the regional gay pride festival just got over and I commented on the number of gays. You have to call it like you see it.
I recently had a friend visit my home town and he had never been here. I was very interested to find out what his first impressions were. I was glad he and his wife were willing to comment on what they noticed. Your impressions and judgements are of course filtered by your own reality. My friend noticed that there were a lot of a certain model of a camper he was thinking about buying. That was not particularly interesting but I wouldn't have ever noticed that. He didn't comment on the percentage of SUVs or monster four door trucks which has to be one of the highest in the nation. One person who read this blog had recently been to Argentina and didn't notice the loud cars. She asked my wife if I had particularly sensitive ears. How can you not notice lots of cars with little or no mufflers?
So rather than not writing about my first impressions of a place because I did not have the time to study the history and do a survey of the locals, I just put my observations out there. I might have a different impression next time. Hopefully people would rather read that than someone trying to stick to the facts and only the facts. This was not a thesis.
I remember reading about an Englishman who traveled around the world on his motorbike. When he got to the Sahara he made his way by asking enough people directions that it seemed to gel into a consensus. So maybe if you read enough blogs about Patagonia you will end up with the information you need that is not too far off the mark.
