 Chatwin spent six months in Patagonia , travelling around gathering stories of people who came from elsewhere and settled there . This trip resulted in the book , In Patagonia ( 1977 ) . He used his quest for his own " piece of brontosaurus " ( the one from his grandparents ' cabinet had been thrown away years earlier ) to frame the story of his trip . Chatwin described In Patagonia as " the narrative of an actual journey and a symbolic one ... It is supposed to fall into the category or be a spoof of Wonder Voyage : the narrator goes to a far country in search of a strange animal : on his way he lands in strange situations , people or other books tell him strange stories which add up to form a message . " 
