Magellan Barberry

“Whoever eats calafate returns”

In Patagonian folk tradition, eating a calafate berry guarantees the eater will return to Patagonia someday. The phrase “el que come calafate vuelve” is repeated to first-time visitors and printed on tourist t-shirts and souvenirs across Tierra del Fuego.

The legend is so embedded in Patagonian culture that calafate has become a regional mascot — appearing on city flags, tourism brochures, and ice cream brand names from Punta Arenas to Ushuaia.

A wild-only harvest

Like many true Patagonian fruits, calafate grows only in the wild — there’s no significant commercial cultivation. The plants are slow-growing thorny shrubs scattered across the Patagonian steppe and pre-Andean foothills.

Local families harvest calafate during the brief late-summer ripening, typically gathering enough for personal jam-making and a few for selling to small artisanal producers.

Calafate ice cream

Patagonian ice cream shops feature calafate as a signature flavor — a deep purple sorbet or ice cream with intense berry flavor and a slight herbal note from the plant’s distinctive terpenes.

In Argentine Patagonia (especially El Calafate, the town named for the plant), calafate ice cream is a major tourist draw and artisanal industry. Local producers compete on the depth of color and intensity of flavor.

A medicinal wild plant

Mapuche and other indigenous Patagonians used calafate berries and bark for traditional medicine — fevers, digestion, eye complaints. The plant contains berberine (also found in many Berberis species worldwide), which has documented antimicrobial effects.

The town of El Calafate in Argentine Patagonia is named for the plant — a town that grew up as a tourist hub for visiting the Perito Moreno glacier and now hosts a steady flow of travelers eager to eat calafate jam, drink calafate sour cocktails, and (per the legend) ensure their eventual return.