Chillaxing in Chile (by Karen)

I've wanted to go to Chile for absolutely ages. I'm not sure I know exactly why, just something about the country has always drawn me.

With its 4270 km length and an average of only 177 km width, and with the magnificent Andes running all the way along its eastern border from top to toe, it's a country of vast scenic diversity.

You know how one tends to have a picture in your mind when you think of a particular place or country, well mine for Chile is that of an old wrinkled toothless lady standing outside a ramshackle hut with a bright colourful cloak drawn over her shoulders. But with all the internationalization and recent developments I was wondering if this was just an image of the past. Luckily this was not the case, and although of course there were big cities and roads and smart houses, the underlying Chilean characteristics and love of colour and art still shines strongly.

Church in Caldera

The Chilean people are pretty laid back, adopting the Latin-American relaxed "mañana" (in my own time) vibe. They were generally very friendly and welcoming, but at the same time they are very curt, no frills sort of attitude. They don't speak much English, but with a combination of the little Spanish we have learnt, plus pre-prepared google translations, plus Spanish phone apps, plus some charades, we managed to get by :). What I did find so bizarre is that even after telling them we didn't speak much Spanish they would still prattle off an entire monologue in Spanish and at high speed and then look at us expectantly. Sorry nope, we STILL don't understand Spanish! :)

I loved the colour of Chile. Everywhere you looked there was vibrancy and life.  They are big on wall murals and graffiti. 

Some of the murals were really excellent pieces of art, skilfully done and often with some historical context. The houses are also a variety of colours, especially in the smaller towns. None of this boring white or cream for the Chileans I tell you.

Virgin Mary statue

We started off in Santiago and that was a bit of a let-down. It wasn't quite the trendy or exciting city that we were expecting. We found it to be quite grubby and a little bit boring quite honestly. It had some cool bits to see of course, the Virgin Mary statue on San Cristóbal Hill, the Plaza De Armas, and a few museums and cathedrals, but even now as I write nothing of Santiago really stands out in my mind. Probably the best bit was the wall murals which tended to have quite a dark side to them but were very interesting.

Camping out in Santiago airport - 6am flight

Hot dogs with guacamole - Chilean favourite!

View of Santiago from San Christobal hill

From there we headed all the way down south to Patagonia region where we did our super-awesome-best-ever-experience trek in Torres Del Paine (see separate blog post, April 2013). After that we returned to Santiago, but bypassed the city and instead we jumped straight onto a bus and went 7 hours north to a beach town called La Serena.

La Serena was a welcome change from Santiago, starting with our super sweet hostel lady Maria, who was just so endearing that we couldn't help but want to stay just so she got our money rather than someone else. We had a very chilled beach day, although this still involved getting to and from the beach ... a 1 hour walk from our hostel. We also attempted to visit the Mamalluca observatory with a tour group, but unfortunately there was too much cloud cover, plus a full moon, and so they warned us that the viewing would be very limited and probably not worth the cost. It was up to us as a group to decide if we wanted to still go ahead with it, or else we could cancel and get full refund. So we voted to go back. Northern Chile is famous for its perfect stargazing skies since it boasts an average of only 25 days a year of cloud cover. So the fact that we hit one of those 25 days was a tad unlucky!

Rone braving the heat of the day to get in a run!

From La Serena we headed another 8 hours north to Caldera, where I felt like we really got to experience rural and authentic Chile. It was way less touristy than La Serena, plus a much smaller town and literally in the middle of semi-desert. The stark desert hills on the horizon were mesmerising, and the rugged coastline one of the most beautiful I have seen. 

Market in Caldera

Rugged hills of Pan De Azucar National Park

We hired a car and drove further north to visit the Parque Nacional Pan de Azúcar, with a Bulgarian/New Yorker friend we met, Antonia. The park was stunning, powerfully striking with its barren desolateness.  I know I'll never do it justice with words so will just post some photos and hope they say what I cannot. I really loved it - it was a place that spoke to my soul. 

Parque Nacional Pan De Azucar

Small fishing village north of Caldera

One of the numerous cacti in the park

Stunning views

Captivating coastline

Playa La Virgen

Playa La Virgen is rated to be Chile's most attractive beach, so of course we had to go and see it for ourselves! We managed to negotiate an extra 2 free hours on top of the usual 1 day (24 hours) for the car hire, and so only had to return it at 1pm the next day.  

Just couldn't resist :)

At first light we sped off to see the "Zoologico de Piedras" (stone zoo) which consisted of some interesting shaped boulders, where if you applied some marijuana-like imagination you might just make out some resemblances to various animals. We then embarked on what turned out to be quite an arduous journey to get to Playa La Virgen, navigating some rather dodgy gravel roads.  

Going for a dip

But eventually we got there and sat on the beach to eat our breakfast, and I of course went for a quick dip in the clear turquoise blue water. It was a really lovely beach, but we rated some of the beaches that we stopped at on the drive up to Pan de Azúcar to be better!