Chile: Patagonia to Costa Rica 1

Chile, where I begin my 6-week trip from Patagonia to Costa Rica, is rich in adventures. You can explore them using the links in the next para. Other posts cover Peru (featuring Machu Piccu), Ecuador (including the Galapagos), Colombia (notably Medellin) and Costa Rica (including Nosara Beach). 

Chile stories

• Arriving: fruit and nut terror
• Santiago de Chile
• Puerto Natales, Patagonia
• Glaciers
• Ruta del Fin del Mundo
• The Lake District
• San Pedro de Atacama
• Moon Valley
• The Altiplano
• The El Tatio Geysers
• Feedback

Arriving: fruit and nut terror

The flight from Buenos Aires to Santiago de Chile crosses the Andes: jagged, snow-capped peaks, deglaciated U-shaped valleys and zig-zag jeep tracks climbing to vertiginous cols. But my attention is caught by a blood-curdling Chilean Customs video about the prohibition of import into the country of “animal and vegetable products”. Will that include the bag of trail mix and nutty energy bars I bought as iron rations for potential late breakfasts or non-existent lunches, and threw into my little checked-on case at the last minute?

Crossing the Andes

A cute customs Labrador sniffs at me and my backpack at Santiago airport, restrained by his or her grim-faced handler. Neither bats an eyelid. But what about my checked-on case? Will Customs detect prohibited items in their mysterious checked-on-luggage-checking procedures? Am I smuggling? As I wait endlessly at the carousel, warnings on every side list forbidden-category food, including – vivid red letters, in bold – dried fruits and nuts. If my minuscule check-on ever appears, I shall ditch the Dutch food products in the nearest bin.

Above Santiago de Chile – having penetrated customs

There’s a horror in waiting for baggage as the crowd of other passengers evaporates, leaving you and that guy with the neatly trimmed beard who might be a disguised customs official. Mine is the last bag to appear, plastered with red and blue tags saying “Chilean Customs Service” and “For further inspection”. I imagine a behind-the-scenes dog nosing my bag eagerly, tail wagging. Nearby, delighted customs officials exchange meaningful looks before replacing my bag on the belt to watch how I respond.

Cyclists in central Santiago

The energy bars and trail mix still nestle amidst my clean underwear. Having had my bag marked as suspicious, would throwing the food away now look even more suspect? Might that make them search my bag – and my person – more thoroughly? I carry the bars and trail mix ostentatiously in one hand into the customs zone. A bored official despatches me into customs hell: hundreds of passengers marked up for further scrutiny. Everywhere, bags are ransacked and voices raised. An Asian-looking man has a large suitcase open, full to the brim with shrink-wrapped meat products. I spot a not-obviously-hostile-looking official with a bristling grey moustache manning a giant scanner and approach him, holding up my illicit cache, and attempt the Spanish for ‘is this forbidden?’ ‘That’s fine,’ he says. ‘Just go through.’ My suitcase – sans the food I have carried past it in my hands – transits the scanner without a bleep.

Chinese economic influence on display

Santiago de Chile

For 28 hours I’ve barely spoken a word except to customs officers. My neighbours on the plane: silent. By contrast, the guide who picks me up at the Arturo Merino Benítez airport in Santiago, whom I shall call Emilia, is happy to chat in Spanish as we race into town. She has cascading curly hair, a daringly cut top and a disarming smile. When I ask about beers of Chile, she delivers a lecture on regional varieties, focusing on the south and Patagonia, deploying the tubby, taciturn driver as needed for in-depth knowledge. 

“Nature in the park” in central Santiago

Why do we visit cities? 90-99% of even the most spectacular ones – Istanbul, say, or Beijing or Athens – are dull: wide streets, faceless office blocks, 1970s housing. Santiago is no exception. The Plaza de Armas and the San Cristobal Hill are OK. It’s fun to find a “Nature in the Park” sign showing a giant hairy spider; or to spot cyclists speeding past a “reduce your speed” sign on a hairpin bend. But when I sit down and have a Pisco Sour so delicious I gasp in pleasure; and eat a swordfish steak with a mouth-watering melange of nuts and sauce and pesto and fresh veg, I am instantly revived.

Most of Santiago looks like this

As I return to the hotel after a solitary evening, a middle-aged woman I’ve never seen before, sitting in the lobby, greets me. Has she mistaken me for someone else? Is she sociable? Plastered? I wander over and make instant friends with six lively Brazilians led by a young English-speaking woman who is visiting Chile with her mum (the woman who greeted me; they are the last words she speaks all evening) and two uncles, a grandmother and an aunt; and a couple from Rheinland-Pfalz who, once they discover I speak German, warm up. The Germans seem to have visited every square inch of South America. They’re just back from Easter Island – part of Chile. ‘The biggest of the statues there is in the British Museum,’ they tell me.

The reviving Pisco sour

A quick check of the British Museum website reveals that there are two Easter Island or Rapa Nui statues there. The museum does not mention their relative size.

Puerto Natales, Patagonia

Precise flights times at Santiago Airport

Domestic flights departing from Santiago do not restrict themselves to round-number departure times. My flight to Puerto Natales, a four-hour 2,000 km flight via Puerto Montt, is timed for 08.22. Other destinations include Copiapo at 07.16, Calama at 08.31 and La Serena at 10.18. Having failed to find the “choose seat” option on the Sky Airline check-in website, I fly from Santiago to Puerto Montt in seat 14B, gazing in frustration past a friendly young Chilean. As he sleeps, mumbling in the sunshine, I glimpse fragments of snowy volcanoes, majestic glaciers and shimmering mountain ranges as if gazing through a distant letter box.

No matter how extraordinary and wonderful the once-in-a-lifetime journey you’ve organised for yourself may be, there’s always someone else doing a far more ambitious trip. It’s like being President of the US, and worrying that you’re not one of the great presidents. At Puerto Montt I shift into the window seat. Gerd, a generous German, is my new neighbour; he kindly allows me to nick his place and look out of the window. He’s on a six-month sabbatical trip around Latin America and is about to go hiking for four days in the Torres del Paine national park. He’s a therapist, he says, he’s been wanting to do this for years. If your own head isn’t in a good place, he says, how can you help others?

Waterfront at Puerto Natales

Obviously, comparing your special trip to anyone else’s is barmy. Wonder, reflect and enjoy.

The outpost town that is Puerto Natales reminds me of Stanley, in the Falkland Islands. It has corrugated iron roofs, howling winds, stoic residents and a damp, scenic sea-front. But Puerto Natales also has jagged mountains, snow-capped even in the November spring, on every side. They’re so awesome you half-expect them to have been added digitally to the landscape, perhaps replacing some low-grade pampas. I run into Gerd again and discover he hails from Cologne, where I was last week. We talk about language. He has spent weeks in Santiago learning Spanish but it’s not enough; he has signed up for another three weeks. As a therapist he hates being unable to communicate. He’s spinning out his budget by buying food in supermarkets. Inspired, I track down a panaderia and munch a delicious empanada. Heading home I see a sign to the Ruta del Fin del Mundo, heading down towards Punta Arenas. What could be more tempting?

Ruta del Fin del Mundo

Chile: Glaciers          

At the Serrano glacier

A boat trip to the Balmaceda and Serrano glaciers in the Bernardo O’Higgins national park starts poorly. When I board the Juana Rodriguez catamaran (capacity: 168 passengers), a hostess leads me to a seat in a vast lounge crammed with people, like a shoebox with holes cut in the sides. Through the salty windows, the choppy fjord and snow-capped peaks seem tamed and diminished. But once the ship sets sail, hardy souls in a carnival of bright outdoor clothes stream outside. A narrow gangway down the side of the vessel, its guard rail disconcertingly low as the icy sea rushes by, leads to the bow. Dozens of passengers gather to feel the full force of nature: towering mountains, sea spray and buffeting, chill winds.

Sea lion cubs

Weather on theUltima Esperanza (last hope) fjord changes swiftly. The ship pauses to bring us face-to-face with drenching, wind-blown waterfalls and a dozen-strong family of noisy sea lions. A condor soars overhead. We admire the jumbled ice-mass of the Balmaceda glacier from the deck. To reach the Serrano the ship moors. We file down a path through the woods to find a round, bright blue, glacial lake, into which the glacier is calving ice floes. The effect is reminiscent of a gigantic gin and tonic.

Serrano Glacier lake

The walk, and everyone’s insatiable desire for pictures of themselves, loosens things up. So does the generous glass of Scotch whisky, chilled with jagged glacial ice, served as we head for lunch.

That whisky

By the time we rejoin the boat after an unexpectedly delicious roast lamb feast at the Estancion Perales, washed down with schooners of wine, women from Chile on the ship begin singing folk songs, then the national anthem, with energy and charm, conducting the music with much arm-waving and trying to teach the rest of us the words. You can see the video on my TikTok feed or YouTube page.

Singing Chileans

Ruta del Fin del Mundo

Heading to the Torres del Paine National Park, our tour bus – decorated with a condor – follows the “Ruta del Fin del Mondo“. The joy of being on the road in Chile with a window seat, a rainbow in the distance, on a Spanish-speaking bus, is intense. Our guide, Natalie, tells us about a nearby cerro (hill), named after the wife of an early explorer, where fossils of an extinct giant penguin have been unearthed. Why are penguins – especially giant ones – so comic? Early settlers, she says, established farms and discovered dinosaur fossils. They also exterminated the indigenous population, little more than a hundred years ago. Local museums are full of pictures of these indigenous peoples and how they lived, and died.

The Grey Glacier lake – the glacier is in the distance

The famous peaks of the Torres del Paine are swathed in cloud. Rain lashes down. Then the sun peeps out. Two Americans, Andy and Ilene, join us to return to Puerto Natales. He’s from New York, she’s from Washington State. They’re each married to someone else, ‘He’s my travel husband,’ she says. ‘It’s all platonic,’ Andy says. ‘Everyone wins,’ Ilene says. They both despair about US politics. ‘The Democrats are so hopeless,’ Ilene says. ‘We’ve just got to hope it all implodes.’ I tell them that whenever President Trump gets involved with Russia’s war on Ukraine, I get requests for interviews to explain what is happening. It’s not always easy.

Mountains in cloud

The arrival of the two Americans means Natalie starts doing her guiding in Spanish and English. I feel obscurely resentful, despite the fact Andy and Ilene are excellent company and my comprehension of Natalie’s Spanish explanations is limited.

Natalie seems to sense my grumpiness. At the Grey Glacier lake, the wind howling, she joins me at the far end of the beach and gamely begins a conversation with me in Spanish about British politics, despite my mangling the language. Why is there no British president? What does the King do? Is the Prime Minister elected? How do people feel about this? She says people in Chile are worried about too many migrants from Venezuela, Argentina and other South American countries. I say migration was a factor in Brexit. ‘Brexit, I have heard of that,’ she says. ‘What is it?’ It’s a reminder that the UK, and Europe, are a long way from here.

Puerto Natales memorial

Strolling around Puerto Natales I pass a well-tended memorial in a park to a young man called Nico. Two other memorials, to young women, sit by the road outside town – presumably road traffic victims. Why is Nico’s memorial in the park? How long do such memorials stay in place in Chile? The roadside memorials seem permanent. But of the two side-by-side outside Puerto Natales, one has fresh Halloween-themed decorations and football pennants, the other is dusty and plain. Did they die in the same accident? Should I or anyone else put up memorials to those we have loved and lost? Outpourings of grief have to find an outlet. My brother was fascinated by old family gravestones in Manchester’s Southern Cemetery: the stones had often sunk into the ground so that only the top couple of centimetres – devoid of any information – protruded.

Chile: The Lake District

From Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt is over 1,000 km by air. The two-hour flight takes us half-way to Santiago, itself half-way up Chile. My neighbour Diego is a friendly engineer who certifies marine radars. At his house, near Puerto Montt, he has built a huge ham radio aerial in his 4-hectare garden. He complains that cheap new Chinese electrical equipment interferes with reception. Bright-eyed and energetic, he plans to build a small hydro-power plant in his garden.

Volcanoes, lakes and verdant countryside around Puerto Montt

‘I enjoy my work,’ Diego says. ‘I visit ships all over Chile and talk to the crews: Puerto Natales, Valparaiso, even other countries.’ He waves at the towering mountains outside the window. ‘This is my office.’ What will he do when he retires? ‘I will work some more.’ He smiles. I am reminded of a French diplomatic colleague whose retirement project was to build by hand a stone wall around his extensive country property. ‘Building a wall,’ he would say. ‘What could be more satisfying than that?’

The Osorno volcano is famed for its beauty and symmetry

The lush green countryside of the Region de Los Lagos (Lake District) owes much to centuries of good husbandry plus two hundred and fifty days of rain each year. Powerful rivers gush through volcanic landscapes. On a tour I meet Emily, an American spending months in South America to improve her Spanish and travel. I ask how she can afford such lengthy journeys. ‘I watch my pennies,’ she says. ‘I teach English as a foreign language, on-line, so it doesn’t matter where I am. The key thing is connectivity, I have a web-cam, it’s flexible. When I have enough money, or if I feel like an adventure, I can always go on an organised excursion like this one.’

This strikes me as a tremendous model for long-term travel.

Memorial to climbers near the peak of the Osorno volcano

Most of Emily’s customers are refugees in the US with specific needs. ‘I try to help them learn how to say their names on the telephone, letter-by-letter, for dealing with officialdom,’ she says. ‘How to pronounce “A” or “B” isn’t that obvious, especially if they’re not used to our alphabet. Plus, their names can be unfamiliar to the people they’re dealing with. I try to school them to fill in the forms they need.’

Language teaching can morph into wider advice. ‘One guy, he was a professor back home, he reads a lot of English but can’t figure out how to use it. I’m trying to get him to answer the question “How are you?” with the reply, “Fine, how are you?” but he keeps leaving out the “How are you?” and just replies “Fine”. Another man used to be a fighter pilot back home for decades, but no-one recognises his qualifications in the US. He’s getting older. He drives a van for a food delivery service.’

Near the top of the Osorno volcano

At the waterfalls our guide praises the beauty of Chile. But like everyone else, she complains that there are too many immigrants, increasing crime levels. We pass a dour German tour guide, his face a patchwork of white sun-cream, gazing gloomily at the Osorno Volcano. ‘No-one knows,’ the German says, ‘whether the snow will be gone in decades, or years. But it can’t last much longer. Last chance to see.’ His audience nod glumly. Looking at the rapid retreats of glaciers all over the world, they are right to be gloomy. Even the impressive Serrano glacier (see above) has retreated by hundreds of metres in recent years.

The “Club Alemán” in Frutillar

Pablo, my guide for a visit to the 19thC German settlement of Frutillar, points me to the “Club Aleman” and the “Deutscher Verein”. ‘Even though the Germans came to Chile centuries ago,’ he says, ‘people around here are still fantastically punctual. They arrive half an hour before an event begins. In the rest of Chile, even the person organising an event isn’t there on time.’ He recommends the cakes at the Cafe Herz: ‘Two old German ladies make them.’

The “Kaffee und Kuchen” at the Cafe Herz was great, although no elderly German women were visible

‘I visited Chiloé Island recently with a group of tourists,’ Pablo says. ‘That’s where I’m from. They said they’d go and get a coffee. I said “But we only have three hours”. They thought I was nuts. After two hours they came back. “The waiter didn’t even bring the menu yet.” Things take time here in the south. We even have the oldest tree in the world, the Araucaria, there’s one that’s five thousand years old. They use it for shingles on houses, they last forever, it’s an eternal wood. They cut down so many that in the 1970s the government banned cutting it, so people started burning the forest. Then they prohibited that, too. Now people use the stumps from trees cut down years ago, the wood lasts for ever.’

Interior at the German Museum in Frutillar. The text over the piano reads: “Don’t complain about getting up in the morning for hard work: It’s wonderful to provide for the ones you love”

Lake Llanquihue is full of fish farms. ‘They grow them in the lake to the size of your finger,’ Pablo says. ‘Then they hoover them up and move them to the ocean to mature. It’s the Pacific, they used to have Pacific salmon, but now they use the Atlantic salmon, the meat is softer, the taste is less strong. The salmon has transformed the economy of Chile. When the gringos first set up fish farms in the 1970s, we said they were locos. “What are you doing?” we said. “We’re planting fish,” they said. At first the flesh was too white, they were using carotene to make it more orange, it was expensive. Then they found new technology, and in the 1990s with the right colour meat, it took off, first with the Japanese, then the US. In 2006 the Chinese promised to buy five hundred thousand tonnes a year, it doubled our production.’

Fish farms feel a bit creepy to me. The idea of adding food supplements to make the meat the right colour is creepier still. Even farming Atlantic salmon in the Pacific sounds a bit odd. But it’s hard to see how we’d have enough fish without them. Catching massive tonnages of wild salmon, even if feasible and sustainable, wouldn’t be easy or cheap.

Desirable residence on Lago Todos los Santos

Like everyone I meet in Chile, Pablo worries about immigration. ‘We’ve seen big changes in Chile in the last few years. Lots of Venezuelan gangs, more crime, and Colombians, bringing drugs. Seven years ago 20,000 Tahitians came here, with a different language, difference culture, we didn’t understand them. Two were working on my house, my dog kept barking at them.’ I check the population of Tahiti. ‘Are you sure? 20,000 Tahitians? I thought they were quite prosperous?’ ‘So sorry.’ He smiles. ‘My English is not so good. Not Tahitians. Haitians.’

On Sunday 16 November, Chile holds elections. The leading candidates seem to hold extreme left- or right-wing views. Locals tell me it’s all about immigration and the economy. Everyone I speak to says they’re voting left, but they expect the right to win. This is only the first round: the leading two candidates will go forward to a run-off to ensure a clear majority. In fact, the Communist candidate, Jara, wins the first round; but the right-wing candidate, Kast, won the second and final round on 14 December.

The museum in Puerto Varas looks fascinating but is often closed

After overnight rain, the snow-capped peak of the Osorno Volcano is shrouded in clouds when I set off to walk into town alongside Lago Llanquihue. The name seems to harbour a hint of Welsh. I pass a quaint private museum, sadly closed on Sunday. Later, when I walk back cradling a bottle of wine, the peak is clear, rising about a halo of cloud in bright sunshine. I hear a voice. A dark-haired woman at the wheel of a white pick-up calls out to me, nodding at the bottle and miming drinking: “Fancy a drink?” She grins and accelerates away.

Chile: San Pedro de Atacama

Water deliveries, San Pedro de Atacama

San Pedro is the gateway to the Atacama Desert, 1,400 km north of Santiago, at the opposite end of Chile from Patagonia. The plane to Calama is full of stout, tough-looking types I guess are from the open-cast copper mine at Chuquicamata. Copper is still Chile’s major export – ahead of salmon. San Pedro, an hour’s drive through featureless desert, is a cross between a High Plains Drifter-type frontier town and a hedonistic 1970s Greek island. Shops selling alpaca goods jostle travel agents offering trips to Bolivia, fresh food markets and health-food cafes. Young people meander through dusty, unpaved streets with twin rucksacks, front and back. The temperature is perfect: crisp and dry. We’re at 2,400 metres altitude.

San Pedro by night

The courtyard of a cultural centre offers a tempting lunch menu. Seeking to ascertain in broken Spanish the dish of the day, I am told it is pastel (cake) de choclo. Fancying something savoury, I leave, only to recall reading in my Lonely Planet guide that pastel de choclo is a traditional South American dish based on mashed sweetcorn. I return and enjoy one of the best meals of my trip so far. Guide books are out of fashion; but reading up ahead of a trip, rather than looking up “Top 10 things to do in X” when you get there, can yield better results.

Pastel de choclo (at the back)

My mid-range San Pedro hotel, the Diego Almagro, has a large, shallow, little-used swimming pool. In November, the water is chilly. Empty sun-loungers line one side. I leave my towel and key-card on one and swim lengths, knees brushing the floor of the pool.

The pool at the Diegro Almagro

From a pool-side room, a middle-aged Chinese couple appear and spread over seven loungers and six chairs a mammoth clothes wash that they have presumably carried out in their room, including such slow-to-dry items as three pairs of jeans. Seeing my towel, the Chinese woman picks it up and spreads it neatly. She picks up my card key and tries it in her door. It doesn’t work. She and her husband confer. I climb from the pool and point out their mistake. ‘So sorry,’ the man says in good English. ‘We thought it was ours.’ It is a windy evening and their laundry keeps blowing away, littering the pool surrounds with socks and knickers.

The Tropic of Capricorn runs through Chile

Visiting scenic places these days often seems to consist of basing yourself somewhere, then going on organised excursions to see the “sights”. Often a “sight” (see geysers, below) doesn’t take long to see, so tour organisers pad the day with lesser sights and unexpected meals. It’s hard to please everyone. I’ve been looking forward for months to a “star-gazing” excursion (“there are few places in the world where the sky is as clear and the view of the stars is so good, as northern Chile”, my itinerary enthuses). The first night, it’s cancelled because clouds (in the Atacama?) have covered the sky. It’s cancelled the following night for the same reason, so I miss my star-gazing. What kind of desert is this?

A German in the lobby tells me I’ve missed nothing. He’s interested in astronomy, and has a special camera that can photograph stars. ‘It wasn’t dark enough,’ he says. ‘Too close to the town. They had fire dancing – not needed. They had cocktails – not needed. Disappointing.’ I kind of agree: on a star-gazing evening I want to gaze at the stars. But his experience shows, first, that different people want different things; and, second, that the urge to record everything risks dominating experiences.

Moon Valley

Buses in Moon Valley

Moon Valley is a zone of wind-sculpted desert rocks and dunes near San Pedro. My tour is full of Brazilians: I sit next to Gina and Salice, who are travelling together. Gina speaks no more English than I do Portuguese, so Salice translates everything for her friend: long questions about me and my past, discussions about travel and Brazil, and themselves. ‘It was an act of God,’ Salice says, ‘a cancelled plane. Without that, we’d never have met.’

Salice and Gina

At every stop in the dramatic landscape, the two women take hundreds of pictures of each other, having a laugh, vamping. They then swipe through them amicably as we travel, deleting most. Our guide points out the perfect cone of a dormant volcano. ‘It’s sealed,’ he says. ‘If it explodes, it’ll be like Vesuvius burying Pompeii. It could explode in 100,000 years, or tonight.’ ‘It can explode on Friday,’ Salice says. ‘We’re leaving on Thursday.’

Guides urge us to drink plenty of water, for altitude sickness. I need all the help I can get: the first night I keep waking up, gasping for breath. My half-litre water flask is too small, but I like it because I’ve used it in the past to store Negroni mix for picnics and other outings. The sweet, sharp aroma clings to the plastic, cheering every sip, for good or ill.

Another Brazilian on the tour, a young architect, offers to take my picture. I give her instructions for what I want, which she politely follows. ‘But let me try this, just in case,’ she says, doing the opposite. The results are outstanding. She says things are tight in Brazil. ‘Everyone wants to save money on building projects, so they save on architecture.’ I say I’d thought Brazil was doing well, rising up GDP tables. ‘Maybe it’s just me,’ she says.

A better picture than I’d have taken

Our Moon Valley driver is a lean young woman with many tattoos. Her dark hair, cut in dramatic sharp edges, gives her a slightly Japanese appearance. She wears mirror sunglasses and never speaks unless spoken to. ‘I have a professional licence for up to 18 passengers,’ she tells me. I say Chileans seem to comprise a huge range of ethnicities. ‘We’re a total mixture,’ she says. ‘It’s the Inca Roads. 30,000 kilometres long, across the whole continent. People went everywhere.’ It all sounds like a long-distance footpath opportunity to me.     

The Altiplano of Chile

Altiplano lake and volcanos

A trip to the salt lakes and lagoons of the Altiplano (Andean plateau) involves a 6 a.m. start. In the lobby I meet Stefan, a doctor from Cologne. He says he’s ashamed to be German these days because of the wave of militarism that has engulfed the nation in the last two years. Politicians, the media and everyone, he says, have done a 180 degree turn to support re-arming against Russia. ‘You can see how Nazism came about,’ he says. I say Putin winning his war against Ukraine would be a disaster. ‘But you can’t beat Russia,’ he says. ‘What about the promise to Russia not to expand NATO?’

I have learned not to point out that these are Putin’s own talking points. No such promise was ever made, I say; the “promise” quoted by the Russian president referred to not stationing NATO troops on the territory of the former East Germany. Was it true, Stefan asks, that Boris Johnson prevented a peace deal early in the war? No, I say; that would grossly exaggerate Johnson’s influence. The Russians have at no point been interested in a peace deal except on their terms. His tour bus comes.

It’s true that the attitudes of many Germans towards Russia have changed fundamentally in recent years, in my view for the better. The main reason for that is Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, causing hundreds of thousands of fatalities.

Vicuñas in the Altiplano

On the tour I meet a retired Swiss couple travelling for months around Brazil, Argentina and Chile. He’s a former architect, she was a school teacher. They tell me how in 1986 they travelled the world for 14 months including China, Japan, Vietnam, Tahiti and Australia. ‘We stayed with a friend with a pig farm,’ he says, ‘he invited me to fix some buildings he was putting up. We nearly stayed there, but we had a round-the-world ticket.’ I ask how they could afford the 1980s trip, as young people. ‘It wasn’t that expensive,’ he says, ‘it only costs 30,000 Swiss Francs.’

This reminds me of hitchhiking in Switzerland in the ‘80s A student driving a Mercedes convertible picked me up. He complained about the recently-introduced motorway toll stickers. ‘You need one for each car you own,’ he said. ‘I have another Mercedes like this, those stickers are expensive.’ When I expressed surprise that a student should own two Mercedes convertibles, he said they were cheap: ‘I bought both of them second-hand’.

Toconao oasis: not how we imagine the Atacama Desert

We visit the village of Toconao – an ancient oasis where, surrounded by salt-cracked desert, water gushes everywhere. Improbably tall, ancient walls of closely fitting stones guide gushing springs, tumbling into deep pools. We pass Putana, an active volcano, its 5,900m summit emitting whiffs of smoke. At the Laguna Chaxa, flamingos dot salt flats stretching into the distance. The birds are spectacular as they soar overhead. We climb past ancient, deserted terracing covering miles of scrubby slopes.

Flamingoes at Lake Chaxa

The history and nature of Chile make a powerful mix. Our guide Kai is also driver and chef and has brought his two children on the trip. ‘I’ll put on some Andean music,’ he says. The plaintive tooting of pan-pipes fills the vehicle. The Altiplano, above 3,800 metres, is dominated by low grass and shrubs. We see a rhea with its young. Herds of vicuñas appear (like wild alpacas); then a guanaco (like a wild llama); and a viscacha (a type of chinchilla with huge ears, like a rabbit).

Rheas in the Altiplano

The “altiplanic lagoons” of Miscanti and Miñiques lie at 4,200 metres, surrounded by mountains. It’s a bleak, huge-scale landscape. Before we set off on an hour-long hike, Kai tells us to “walk slowly and breathe deeply” to offset the risk of altitude sickness. This is good advice, reminiscent of the “pole pole” (slowly, slowly) prescription for climbers on Mount Kilimanjaro. When we start, I find myself immediately out of breath – it’s like suddenly being twenty years older, or having asthma, or both. Having to breathe consciously feels counterintuitive, like yoga, or diving. Kai’s 11-year-old daughter is affected worst. She sits forlorn, head in hands, but revives swiftly as we descend.

At the Altiplano lakes

The “El Tatio” geysers

Pick-up-up time for the “El Tatio” geyser tour is 5 a.m. The logic is that at the coldest point of the night, before sunrise, the steam from the geysers is at its most spectacular. When we arrive at 4,300 metres at 7.15, an orange glow lighting the soaring mountains, it’s minus three degrees. Hundreds of geysers, some big and named (“The Assassin”), many others anonymous and petite, produce tall columns of steam or fountains of boiling water. Much of the ground is frozen, as are we. The rising sun highlights steam, and visitors, in spectacular, Lowry-esque scenes. It’s a sensuous sensation to feel the ground warm beneath your feet, the air still freezing, the sun and steam thawing your skin.

The El Tatio geysers

A ridge overlooking the site resembles the profile of a man: hair, brow, nose, chin. ‘This is a sacred place,’ our guide says, ‘indigenous people thought it was propitious when the landscape resembled humans. “El Tatio” means “The crying grandfather” in the original native language.’ Opinions differ on whether the title refers to the face on the mountain or the columns of steam rising everywhere.

Spot the face

The El Tatio tour is entirely Spanish-speaking. I chat to Isabel, Maria and Carmen from the Madrid area, who travel somewhere together every three years. They were on my tour yesterday, too. Isabel runs a family bakery business; she pronounces the rich, tangy breakfast baguettes the first decent bread she’s had in Chile. ‘It’s always supermarket stuff,’ she says. Their last trip was to Madagascar: ‘Definitely worth visiting. Completely wild, and not too expensive apart from the flights. We use this great agency in Barcelona, they organise for you to stay with local people.’

Wrapped up warmly before dawn for the El Tatio geyser visit

I ask where they’re staying in San Pedro. ‘It’s called the Hard Road Hotel,’ Isabel says. ‘It’s certainly hard. This morning there was no water.’ Maria is fascinated that I’ve lived in Lesotho: she recently did a tour of South Africa, Swaziland and Lesotho. Yet again I’m awed by others’ extensive travels. Is there a hard core of travel junkies, or are a lot of people travelling widely? Or both? I’m grateful to the three Spaniards for talking to me in Spanish for two days, coaching me patiently as I mangle the language.

My video of the geysers in action

Peru, Ecuador and Colombia

Later posts include Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Costa Rica, with more pictures.

Feedback

I’d welcome feedback on these travel blogs, in the comments or direct by e-mail. Is this too much detail? Too few/too many photos? Other thoughts? Let me know. I’m also posting a few photos on Instagram and elsewhere, with the hashtag #patrica (for Patagonia to Costa Rica).

If you enjoy my travel writing, you may like to explore my US road trip piece from 1979 “A voyage around America“; my piece The Russians: Vladivostok; or my recent account of a disastrous boat trip to visit the dragons of Komodo.

My trip-of-a-lifetime from Patagonia to Costa Rica was organised by Sinead at Travel Differently.