Chile thrills with diverse landscapes
Travellers will be anything but bored with so much to see and do in this country
For diversity to rival the makeup of a Justin Trudeau cabinet, it’s hard to beat Chile.
From the forbidding, wet and windy peaks of Patagonia in the south to the driest desert in the world in the north, this long filament of a country squeezed between the Andes and the Pacific is decorated with volcanoes, glaciers, waterfalls, wineries, beaches, as well as increasingly sophisticated cities, such as Santiago and Valparaiso.
The vast Atacama Desert is worth a few days of its own. The stunning region features enormous salt flats and lagoons, dunes and (literally) otherworldly landscapes, as at the aptly named Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon).
After a few days of altitude acclimatization, one can hike volcanoes, sand-board, or visit the El Tatio geysers from the transit town of San Pedro de Atacama. A trip to the geysers involves a two-hour pre-dawn drive on unpaved roads up to an elevation of more than 4,000 metres. The geysers are scattered over a large area, ringed by mountains forming a natural amphitheatre. Up close, they release near-continuous bursts of steam with a not unpleasant smell of oatmeal cooking.
Chile is far away from almost everyone, romantically off the grid.
“Have gone to Patagonia,” legendary travel writer Bruce Chatwin telegrammed his London editors. It was understood he would be unreachable.
The tourist infrastructure has developed, but without feeling overly commercialized.
This is mostly a good thing, though not always. Until late 2015, tourists could gambol freely around the geysers, hopping over the small ones, parboiling one’s selfie stick over the larger ones.
Then a tourist fell into one of the larger geysers and died. Now authorities have encircled the springs with stones painted red or yellow, depending on the level of estimated risk.
Until a few years ago, Atacama had been the preserve of backpackers, and the few towns in the region are still populated with hostels, bars and cheap eats.
People travel days by bus to Peru to the north, to Bolivia a short distance away to the east, or towards Argentina, reached by mountain pass to the southeast.
But Atacama also now features a handful of high-end lodge/spas, such as the Alto Atacama, lovingly de- signed to incorporate materials and crafts from the surrounding landscape and communities, while leaving a light environmental footprint.
Despite its harshness, the Atacama is home to rare species of flamingos, wild guanacos and vicunas — the last two being cousins of the llama.
Stargazing is a must. The elevation, clear air, and absence of humanity means a show every night (weather permitting). There are even laws in Atacama regulating light pollution.
One of the country’s rising destinations is Chiloe Island in the south.
It feels like New Zealand, or maybe Ireland — lots of fog, rainbows, rolling green hills, tucked-away coves and fishing villages.
The 40-island archipelago (named for the main island) is clothed in myths, including that of Trauco, a homely-looking goblin who lives in the forests, and to this day is invoked whenever an unwed woman becomes pregnant. Trauco is one figure in Chilote mythology, which predates the arrival of the Spanish.
Chiloe also has an affinity for the potato — there are 400, maybe as many as 500 varieties grown, with claims that most potatoes consumed worldwide today are descended from spuds originating in the Chiloe Islands or close by on the mainland.
Blue whales gather off the oceanfacing coast, and the archipelago is home to penguin breeding grounds.
In the main town of Castro you’ll see neighbourhoods with colourful houses on stilts. At one time these were considered an eyesore, even illegal, as they are built without permission over water. These days they have been accepted and even promoted as a tourist draw, with a few converted into hostels and small boutique hotels.
The islands are dotted by 16 UNESCO-protected wooden churches that locals built between the17th and19th centuries under the supervision of Jesuits and Franciscans.
Chiloe Island, larger than Prince Edward Island, features biking, horseback riding and sea kayaking.
A stylish lodging option is Tierra Chiloe, a Bond villain’s lair, ecofriendly and culturally respectful, down to the concrete stilts on which the 12-room facility sits, invoking the wooden houses in nearby Castro.
Chileans are hard-working, quietly optimistic — they freely admit they are not carefree or brassy. They do not live for today but for the day after tomorrow. They enjoy carefully planned spontaneous fun.
Chile is a seismic country, resting atop shifting tectonic plates, so beware: people will try to engage you in conversation about geology. But the country is also proud of its stability in terms of its currency, the economy, politics — unlike those mercurial boom-bust neighbours.
The dictator Augusto Pinochet has been wiped clean from much of the national consciousness, at least in public fora. One exception is a cool bar-restaurant called the Clinic, which has several locations, including one in Santiago and one with a rooftop terrace on a hill in Valparaiso. The Clinic also, unusually, operates a nationally available satirical newspaper renowned for skewering politicians of all stripes. The name of the bar refers to the fact Pinochet was only finally arrested in 1998, at a medical clinic in London, where he had gone for treatment.
Chileans won’t pitch their country as being all things to all people: they will tell you frankly to eat beef while in Argentina, but switch to seafood when you arrive in Chile. It will be suggested you drink Malbec in Argentina, Carmenere in Chile. Chileans enjoy telling the story of Carmenere, perhaps as a metaphor for the story of their country — it’s a grape that had nearly been wiped out in its native France, but was diligently cultivated in Chile, without fanfare, for more than a century, finally rediscovered and reintroduced into the international spotlight less than 20 years ago.
Santiago is a major metropolis, with the traffic to prove it, while the rest of the country is sparsely populated.
Chile’s urban jewel is Valparaiso, a pleasant 90-minute drive from Santiago to the Pacific coast, through winery-dominated valleys. Valparaiso is a naval town. Its historic quarter is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with jumbled houses and mansions clinging to steep hillsides overlooking the ocean, rickety funiculars, dinged-up trolleybuses and a Mediterranean climate.
It conjures up California in author John Steinbeck’s time; it’s also one of those cities whose charms and collective impression are difficult to convey but instantly understood by anyone who sets foot there, much like a Barcelona, Istanbul or Tokyo. Alexander Wooley’s trip was sponsored by Goway travel, LAN/LATAM Airlines and the Chilean Tourism Board, which didn’t review or approve this story.