When Magellan first discovered Patagonia in the first circumnavigation of the globe in 1520, he named it after the impressive size of its people. Patagonia did things on a big scale then and, almost 500 years later, nothing has changed: huge whales, elephant seals and penguins can still be witnessed from empty and undeveloped shores; condors still shadow pumas to pick the bones from a kill; giant salmon and trout feast in the pure rivers and the remnants of the gigantic dinosaurs of the mid-Jurassic period lie across the region with their bones turned to stone. The undeveloped nature of the land means that plant and animal species have not become extinct as elsewhere in Latin America and are still here to seen and studied as they were by Darwin over 150 years ago.