Five Seasons of Exploradores: A Program Coming of Age in Patagonia Park
When Exploradores welcomed its first group of youth to Patagonia Park in 2022, it did so with a simple premise: give kids who grow up alongside this landscape the opportunity to get to know it better. Five seasons later, that premise still holds – and has taken root across the region.
Exploradores is an environmental education program based in Patagonia Park, which Freyja and Rewilding Argentina launched alongside conservation and infrastructure development in the park. Through overnight camping trips, day outings, and educational activities, Exploradores participants gain a deeper understanding of the park's ecology, history, and cultural significance. The idea is both straightforward and forward-thinking: build a lasting relationship between young people and the territory they call home, one camp at a time, one summer at a time.
Rock climbing in Caracoles Canyon during an Exploradores camping trip
The program recently closed out its fifth season with a record cohort and its most successful programming to date. 168 children from the three towns closest to the park – Perito Moreno, Los Antiguos, and Lago Posadas – joined Exploradores camping trips, climbing the walls of Pinturas Canyon, tracking guanacos, and learning to read the rocks beneath their feet.
A season of sustained growth
The headline numbers tell one part of the story. This season, participation grew 34% as compared to the previous season, and 280% since the program’s first one, with 56% of this summer's campers attending for the first time. Across eleven camping trips, the team also noted a unique trend: a meaningful number of younger siblings of past participants enrolled this year, a sign that Exploradores is starting to pass down within families in the region.
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Growth in participation compared to the previous season
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The season’s total number of camping trips in Patagonia Park
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Growth in participation compared to the program’s first season
Gender equity also continued to climb. In the first season, 33% of participants were girls. This season, that figure reached 54%, and 66% of first-time campers were girls. The team set out to make outdoor activities feel within reach for every kid in the region, regardless of gender – and the numbers suggest that idea is taking hold.
Pedagogically, the season also brought some of the most ambitious programming yet. A new narrative thread called Viaje en el Tiempo (Time Travel) invited campers to read the canyon as a layered record of geological, ecological, and human time. A game called Captura el Glaciar (Capture the Glacier) sparked conversations about protecting the Zeballos glacier, the source of much of the region's water – conversations that one evening spilled spontaneously into a camper-led debate the team dubbed the Cumbre de Explo, a mini “climate summit” amongst participants.
The program also deepened its roots in surrounding communities. For the first time, an instructor from Perito Moreno – the town closest to Patagonia Park – joined the team, bringing greater local knowledge and connection to the territory into the heart of the program. Participation from the nearby town of Los Antiguos also grew 52% compared to the previous year, and has multiplied more than eightfold since 2024. And the season closed with a first-ever family event in Perito Moreno that drew 36 families – making the Exploradores community visible and interconnected in a new way
Games and activities during Exploradores activities, including a spontaneous, camper-led “climate summit”
Looking ahead
Five years in, the program's impact is not just measured in campers or camping trips, but also in what stays with participants when they return home. Ninety-seven percent of this season's campers said they want to come back, three quarters said they want to make a change in their own lives because of what they learned, and older participants are now talking about careers in conservation as park rangers or biologists.
Those are the seeds of what Exploradores is planting. The program has earned it a place as a reference point for nature-based education, and Freyja is proud to help support the region’s next generation of environmental stewards.
Exploradores in Patagonia Park
