Why Chile?

I will admit, it has been incredibly hard to justify to others why I chose Chile, and only Chile, to travel to for backpacking, all the way from India. Thinking rationally, there were so many other countries I could choose - convenient to travel to, without visa issues, cheaper, culturally vibrant and whatnot.

So far, I have been getting by with lame wisecracks like "Well, WHY NOT?" or "I threw a blind dart at a world map". But for me, it was a whim. And has been for years now. I have always been intrigued by the country. I had wondered, as a student of geography, how that piece of land could be all one country. How does a country geographically challenged, exist, nay, thrive, no less. What are the people there like? What goes on in that lanky piece of land, languishing in one corner of the world?

And these general but pressing enquiries led me plan a trip to Chile, alone, for 5 weeks. The time of my visit was to be in the month of April and May, during the autumn and the onset of winters in the southern hemisphere. Being a recreational runner, I also decided to participate in the Santiago Marathon, which happened to be during my planned stay in the country.

The Travel Map through Chile

The first hurdle was to get to Chile, from India - a couple of oceans and a handful of continents across. After a planning exercise that went on for weeks, I packed light - in a small 30 litre bag - and put in only the bare essentials, at best.

The flying time was to be 24 hours - split between two flights, being airside or in-air for 48 hours. After an initial bumming experience at the Air France counters at the Delhi Airport, I went through the portals and vortexes of the Paris Airport, before finally making it to Santiago de Chile, the capital.

Chile was real. Maps in my geography textbooks were not an act of fantasy.



Now, the grand plan was to travel the entire length of Chile, starting from the north - 4200 km in crows path and more than 5000 km by roadways and waterways. All this while stopping over in cities, towns, villages and interesting places on my way.

And so I did. Stopping over in cities - mostly for 2-3 nights, before hopping on to the next - I stayed in Arica, San Pedro de Atacama, La Serena, Pisco Elqui, Valparaiso, Santiago, Pucon, Frutillar, Hornopiren, Villa Santa Lucia, Coyhaique, Punta Arenas, Puerto Williams and Puerto Natales.

(A longer post on my travel route through the country)

The Geographical Marvels of Chile

Before I begin on my trope of how beautiful the landscapes in the country are, a bit about the geography of the country.

The Andes pushing it to the Pacific and the Pacific pushing it back, Chile stands doggedly at the precipice, with a strange geography - stretching over 4200 kms right from the tropical latitude of 18° degree to 56° degrees latitude, a few degrees short of breaching the Antarctic circle, and only about 100 kms wide on an average. The longest and the most slender country in the world, it has a coastline along the entire length of it, making the whole country, simplistically speaking, a beach.

It has the Atacama desert - the driest place on earth - in the north, followed by the temperate forests in the centre followed by the rugged, ice-capped mountains of Patagonia in the south - all while having a coastline following all these terrains in the west and the Andes in the east!

As a guide of one of the tours I was part of, put it - 'Chile rises from the sea-beaches in the west and to the peaks of Andes in the east (often 5000+ metres) within a distance of a hundred kilometres or so, throughout all of it's latitudes, making the whole country a matrix of climate classifications.'

With all this topography at its beckoning, I knew Chile had promise. I was a live spectator to the sight of the vastness of the Atacama desert, the volcanoes peppered throughout the Andes overlooking the Chilean towns, the absolute inhospitability of Patagonia, the extinct glaciers marching through the mountains as they carved fjords through the rugged coastline, leaving behind massive glacial lakes.

And much more. I am hard-pressed to think of another country which has a geographical diversity as wide as that Chile packs. (Listed them with pictures here)



The Santiago Marathon

An important activity on my agenda for the trip was the Santiago Marathon. I had booked the Marathon much before I booked my flights to Chile. It was not only a ploy to keep my eating and drinking habits in check while in Chile, but I was also looking forward to running in Santiago and getting to see the city, in a sea of 30 thousand people, through its streets - historic and modern alike.

And the atmosphere and the arrangement of the marathon smashed all my expectations, and set a bar impossibly high for all the marathons I am going to be participating in, in the future.

The weather decided to be pleasant. And the people turned up in the streets, with all their enthusiasm, their witty posters and drawings and their stereos smashing beat-y music. Toddlers stood by the roads and cheered on - dispensing high fives and power-ups off of their tiny hands to anybody who seem bogged or tired against the challenge of the run.

I raced well for my expectations. And experience was cathartic and set me up for the rest of my trip - the remaining 4 weeks where I was to traverse the entire length of the country.

(Read More - Detailed Race Report)

Pardon my Español

It was a great travesty that my innocent attempts to chat and banter with the Chilenos were stymied by my Spanish-speaking skills. Or the lack thereof. To anyone who attempted to converse with me in Spanish, I told them that my proficiency in their language was "mierda" and accepted defeat, with my head in half-mast and a coy smile.

"English motherf***er, do you speak it!"

At the time of each necessary interaction, my sparkling, hopeful eyes would ask if they "Hablas ingles?", only for my hopes to be shot right at, because most of them didn't. English, as it turns out, is not a language taught as a serious subject in most schools and hence, not spoken a lot. 

Chilenismos

And I learnt that the Chileans speak their own brand of Spanish, with their own dialect, having had invented words and phrases of their own since the Spanish left them - only semi-intelligible to even a native-spanish speaker at times.

They would use words like Cachai, Si-po, Wena or just decide to understress the "s" sound in words and make them sound completely different. Different enough for even Google translate to throw its hands up in defeat.

This bespoke Chilean language would also extra sugar to their greetings by doubling down on them. "Chao Chao!", instead of a single "Chao!", or "Hola Hola!" instead of a single "Hola!", or "Buenas Buenas!" instead of "Buenas Dias" or "Buenas Tardes". Much adorable!

Now you "Si" Me

While I overused the few words I did know to their max potential, "Si", "Por Favor", and "Gracias" can only take you so far. But being pushed to the wall, and needing to get by everyday - eating meals outside, buying groceries, getting around in public transport and asking for directions and to make the odd situational comic quip here and there - I was forced by circumstances to learn Spanish. But only barely enough to do all these above tasks.

Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?

My Spanish was a Spanish of utility. It butchered accent, trampled pronunciation under the foot and tore grammar to shreds and flung them in the air with reckless abandon. And yet, albeit barely, it was still Spanish. And it worked. Sure, I could not have a spontaneous and deep heart-to-heart conversation with anyone without having to brandish the google translate app on my phone.

But I could still make some small talk, get what I wanted to eat in restaurants, buy grocery, make some banter and laugh with them at my misery of not being able to recall translation of words or at stopping mid-sentence for several seconds to figure out the correct conjugation. The Chileans, with their depth-less reserves of patience and kindness, would never interrupt me, or insinuate that I hurry up, or bring me down and refuse to help me when they could.

Smile and wave, boys. Smile and wave!

Oh, and let's not forget the immense value-add good dumb charades can be to patchy language skills. Be it asking if deodorants were allowed on-board the flight or telling people that there was a rainbow outside or that I wanted chicken breast and not fish, good dumb charades with animated hand gestures supplemented my "mierda" Spanish-speaking skills well.

Hold my Empanadas

As an Indian, I am so used to having a host of options for food that I am hardly forced to try things outside our palette. The food in Chile is so different from that palette that a lot of scrambling had to be done, on-ground research be undertaken and adjustments made in order to not go hungry.

There's very little food the Chileans can call their own. Most food I found was Latin American food, except some local meat. And fish, thanks to the their long extensive coastline from the tropics to the polar circle.

Well, to sum it up, there's a lot of carne, papa fritas, a host of options of ensaladas. The food trucks had varieties of churrascos, hamburgers, and something called COMPLETOS - a hotdog the Chileans improvised by going to town on the sauces - mayo, ketchup, salsa, mustard and a ton of palta (avocado. Chileans LOVE the avoacdo). Something the Chileans can call their own.

Oh, and did I mention empanadas? There's EMPANADAS everywhere! You can never go hungry in Chile if you catch a taste for them empanadas.

Vinos and Cervezas

The alcohol in Chile exceeded expectations. The Pisco sour from the Elqui Valley, wines from Elqui and the neighbouring valleys and beers from all across the land of Chile, are superb spirits. For a person like me, who does not have the taste-buds or the sommelier skills to distinguish texture, taste, bitterness or notes between drinks, or even know what these aspects actually mean, I could only say "Salud!" (Cheers to Health!) and gulp 'em down!



(Some more on the food experience in Chile)

I Don't Know Who You Are. But I Will

Find You. And I Will Help You.

I will admit to having had reservations about going to a place I knew so little about, did not speak the language of and overemphasized in my mind the bad stories I had heard, over the good ones. As I started my journey from Santiago, warming up and figuring out on how to get around, I bumped into some extremely kind and nice people and I could only thank my stars that I was lucky enough to avoid the bad seeds and the crazies.

But I soon realised, as I encountered more and more people, that my stars had nothing to do with it. It was the goodness and the wholesomeness of the Chileans to credit to.

I struggled with the language and had to spend more than normal time (inordinate amount of time) on counters - food counters, grocery shops, supermarkets, ticket counters et. al. And the people were were extremely patient and helpful while I tried telling what I wanted, using a mixture of my primitive Spanish, google translate and dumb charades.

And a lot of people went out of their way - people from queue I was holding up coming up and helping me out, that lady behind the counter in a metro station in Valparaiso who called up her daughter(who could speak english) as we had a three-way conversation where I conveyed to her how I only wanted a metro card for my stupid hobby of collecting metro cards from the cities I visit, or the campsite people who set up my entire tent because I didn't know how to, the innumerable Chilean babushkas, gopniks and niños who stopped on the street, trying their best with hand-gestures and the few English words they knew, to help me figure out local transport and directions that I was always confused with (If I had a penny for all the times I took the buses and the metro in the opposite direction..).

A special shout-out to Juan, the driver of a small truck, who was driving towards the other side, spots me trying for a hacer dedo (sticking out a thumb for a lift), slows down and takes a U-turn, stops and comes out, tries to suggest something in Spanish, runs aground with spoken language and gestures, and then resorts to using stones on the ground to explain directions outside the city of Chaiten and waits for me until a small intercity bus arrives. Juan, you da real MVP, hombre!



Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Enough about hoomans though. Even the most pleasant of animals, the goodest of doggos and the least conniving cats are to be found in Chile, I hereby declare. While street dogs were absent in Santiago, other cities and towns had the furriest and the most playful dogs I've met.

As a person who insists on petting street dogs and cats, throwing to wind all caution about them being unsanitary and the risk of them giving a rabid bite, I was giving doggers on the street belly rubs and luring cats with pspspsps-es and giving them head scritches like nobody's business.



Visions through the window-side : Travelling through Chile

Buses between cities, micros (a local bus) and taxis within cities and ferries for places inaccessible by road - that's how I managed travelling over 5000 kms, apart from the couple of internal flights, one of them being dictated by the limitation of the terrain.

The equine intercity buses - some of the most comfortable ones I have ever been on - carried me through the bulk of my journey. A ton of operators options to choose from, these double decker buses carried me safe, sound and merrily all the way from Arica in the north to the start of the Carratera Austral in La Arena (near Puerto Montt), where I had catch my first ferry, which took 10 minutes to put me back on land where I continued on in another bus.

As Patagonia (more on Patagonia a bit later) started dominate and the landscape began to be inhospitable, I encountered more and more situations where I had no option but to cross the terrain (magnificent fjords!) on boats - the most spectacular of them being the Yaghan (Another post with some more raving about the Yaghan), the 32 hour ferry ride from through the Strait of Magellan and the Beagle Channel to reach Puerto Williams, the last town on the continent going south.

I also ended up taking two flights - one, to reach Arica from Santiago, to start my southbound journey and the other from Coyhaique, in North Patagonia to Punta Arenas, in South Patagonia - for the two cities are separated by some of largest ice-masses on the planet and the road turns into Argentina between the two cities to circumvent the enormous barrier.

(Read more)



Through Valhalla - Patagonian Chile

My plan to scale the length of the country started from the Atacama desert in the north to Patagonia in the south. And I am glad I saved the best for the last.

After travelling through the barren wastelands, followed by the temperate forests in the middle, you finally enter the region of Patagonia - the land of fjords and glaciers.

Patagonia starts by going easy on you. I started from the city of Puerto Montt, where the Patagonian Highway, also called the Carratera Austral, starts mellow and rustic. Small towns, with mildly winding roads, green farmlands, islands in the distance, beautiful sea shores. And I thought, 'Hey, they is nice'.

And then it starts turning it up. Within a couple of hours of Puerto Montt, the road comes to a screeching halt at La Arena and a 10 minute ferry ride is the only way to cross the inlet of sea water, to the other side, where the road resumes. And that is where you see the first glimpses of Patagonia. Real Patagonia. A erstwhile-glacial valley to my left, with snow capped peaks colonised by the sea. A mere teaser.

And then we go further down south, and the coastline's getting more and more rugged. There is another ferry-crossing at Hornopiren, again through a fjord, but this time for 3 hours. Here he valleys are bigger, the channels wider, the peaks higher, the forests thicker and the air much colder. I realise that this must be the Patagonia the tourists raved on and on about. I thought this was the most beautiful place I had ever been to.

And then, Patagonia laughed and decided to dial it up even more. On the bus ride from Santa Lucia to Coyhaique, I saw Patagonia blossom. A range of mountains covered by snow and clouds on either side as we drove through the valley in the insignificant motorbus, passing bubbling streams, lush green grasslands, massive fjords and the occasional hamlets with colourful huts. Patagonia was blowing my mind. It was a barrage of stimulus. I would have barely consumed a visual frame of a beautiful landscape and Patagonia would present another. And then another. And another. With an abject disregard for the processing capacity of my head, it kept on throwing bazookas of gorgeous landscapes. THIS, and not what I saw the previous day, was the most beautiful place I had ever been to.

And then, Patagonia got serious and says "This ain't even my final form". The last of my ferry rides - a 32 hour ride from Punta Arenas to Puerto Williams - Patagonia clinches it. It travels through the Straight of Magellen, the meeting point of the two biggest oceans on the planet - and then takes a turn into the Beagle Channel. The grandest of glaciers, the densest of forests, the most playful of birds and sea animals, the mountains surrounded by clouds sprinkling mist in the entire valley and us - the odd man-made ship shepherded by tiny lighthouses.

My brain had stopped believing that the sights were real. Body had exhausted itself of reactions - no more goosebumbs, no more crying, no more jaw-drops. This Patagonia was beyond the realm of dumb-foundedness. It was nature on steroids. It must be heaven.

Witnessing this part of Patagonia was akin to being moved to a time - an epoch in the geological timescale - when humans were yet to discover this land, when giants walked the earth, when the ice age was hanging on to its last vestiges and the animals and birds were coming out of their burrows after the long, cold winter. That world today exists only in patches and spots, far away from our convenient civilizations. Nature still roams free here, unconquerable. This world remains untamed, still subject to the rules of nature and its mood swings.

Wildlife - the whales and the penguins and the sea lions and the albatrosses - exists here unaware of the fact that this planet has been tamed by the humans. They roam around and fly here, nest in the forests, unbeknownst, that their counterparts from the rest of the planet have had their world turned upside down, that they have had to make agreements and compromises with the new apex predator so they may be allowed to survive.



Patagonia - Where Ice Meets the Ocean

The two geological giants that shape Chile - the icy Andes and the Pacific Ocean - run parallel to each other through the north and the central part of Chile. They are never too far, but always buffered by land.

They never really get close to each other. Maybe only in sight at some sites. There were places (I remember one on the way between La Serena and Valparaiso) where I could see both of them from one spot, with a turn of my head - the Andes to my left and the Pacific ocean coastline to my right.

But as I headed down south and entered Patagonia, I could see the two getting closer and closer. The Pacific ocean had started encroaching into the base of the mountains into the valleys, in the guise of fjords, inlets and sounds. The Andes had stray ridge ranges turning westward and almost hitting the ocean. Almost.

But the two still couldn't meet - the ice held aloft by the high mountains and the sea-bound march of the mountains stopped by the plains. And I wondered, "Would they ever?".

And for me somehow, the trip and its closure became about the poetic confluence of the two forces. I was invested in the narrative now. As I kept wriggling my way further south, I was looking out for the landscapes, looking for that glacier descending all the way into ocean, or the snow caps coming down low enough and merging into the water. It would be unfinished business for me if I never see them meet. For hundreds of kilometres, lasting several days for me, they play cat and mouse, teasing each other.

And then, on the last evening of my last ride south - the ferry to the bottom of Patagonia - sailing through mind-numbing terrains, there comes the famous glacial alley of the Beagle Channel. The alley has a string of massive overhanging glaciers, plunging all the way into the ocean. A sight so magnificent, that the entire ship was out on the deck, in sub-zero temperatures witnessing the grand piece of natural art.

And there was my confluence. The ice finally met the ocean. The last of Patagonia had brought conclusion to the narrative and also to the trip.

"THE" Trip

As I battled the possibilities of things going wrong in my head with my possible cancellation of my flights (owing to bad weather) on my way back, I had to be grateful for the small things that had gone right so far, about how I had lucked out on the things which made my trip better, one journey at a time, one evening at a time, one stay at a time. I, and people close to me, were worried about how the country would treat a person from a completely different cultural upbringing, travelling alone.

Chile was kind.