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Tierra del Fuego, or the ‘Land of Fire’, is a windswept, glacially carved archipelago at the extreme southern tip of South America. It is split between Argentina and Chile. The Argentinian side is dominated by the last foothills of the Andes, which twist into jagged ridges, U-shaped glacial valleys, peat bogs and fjord-like channels. The…
Perito Moreno is one of Patagonia’s most iconic glaciers. The glacier is named after Francisco Pascasio Moreno, a famous Argentine explorer who played a key role in surveying Patagonia and establishing Argentina’s national borders in the late 19th and early 20th century. His nickname was ‘perito’ which means ‘expert’ or ‘specialist’ in Spanish and several…
Glacier Upsala, on the northern arm of Lago Argentino and within the Los Glaciares National Park is one of the longest glaciers in South America. It is 60km when measured end-to-end and is one of the largest and most powerful glaciers in the region. It is also one of the most fragile. The Southern Patagonian…
Chile has been spectacular and is truly a beautiful country to visit. We started in the Central Valley region exploring Santiago and Valparaiso. We travelled far into the Pacific Ocean to see the moai of Rapanui. And far north into the Atacama to see volcanoes, deserts, lagoons and salt flats. And finally we headed south…
Chile’s long, thin geography produced a mosaic of cultures, thousands of years before the Spanish conquest of the 16th century. It was never a unified civilization but rather a set of distinct cultural regions shaped by deserts, coasts, forests and mountains. Chile is one of the earliest known inhabited regions in the Americas. The archeological…
The towers of Torres del Paine are three granite spires that abruptly rise from the Patagonian steppe and form one of the most iconic mountain landscapes on the planet. They are the namesake of the park itself and the center piece of the entire Paine Massif. Seeing the towers is the biggest draw for tourists…
Torres del Paine is famous for its dramatic landscapes: the granite peaks of the Paine Massif, including the towers that give the park its name, turquoise glacial lakes, rivers and glaciers fed from the Southern Patagonian Ice Field. The park was established in 1959 and declared a UNESCO Biosphere in 1978. We were lucky to…
Punta Arenas sits on the Brunswick Peninsula in Chile’s far south, overlooking the Strait of Magellan. It is the southernmost major city in continental South America. The city is built on gently rising hills and is surrounded by bleak Patagonian steppe, with low shrubs, wide skies and constant wind. This is one of the windiest…
My next destination is Patagonia. The end of the world. Or at least of South America. The word conjures up images in my mind of explorers, epic landscapes and emptiness. Everyone I have met who has been to this faraway place has raved about it but I have no idea what to expect! All I…
The Atacama is one of the best meteor-hunting regions in the world and tens of thousands of meteorite fragments have been recorded here. Meteorites found here can be millions of years old. Why is the Atacama such a good place to find meteorites? All of the above means that meteorites in this region are often,…
San Pedro de Atacama is one of the best stargazing locations on earth. It has a combination of geography, climate and altitude that creates perfectly clear skies and excellent conditions for seeing the stars. Why is it so good? The conditions are so good that many world-class observatories have chosen to build their telescopes here.…
It was an early start today, departing our hotel at 6.45 for a full day’s adventure out into the Atacama. As we left town with the perfectly conical Licancabur volcano looming over us, we quickly gained elevation to get a sweeping view across the Salar de Atacama. We stopped after about 30 minutes in the…
Moon Valley lies 13km west of San Pedro de Atacama inside the Salt Mountain Range (Cordillera de la Sal), running north-south along the western edge of the Atacama Salt Flat (Salar de Atacama). Parts of this valley have not received rainfall for centuries and there is almost no vegetation. The Cordillera de la Sal is…
The flag of Chile consists of 2 horizontal bands of red and white, with a blue square bearing a white five-pointed star in its center. It was adopted in October 1817, a few months before Chile formally declared independence, and is known in Spanish as ‘La Estralla Solitaria’ or ‘Lone Star’. The white represents the…
The small oasis of San Pedro De Atacama is a tiny adobe-built town set in one of the harshest climates on earth. This small town of 12,000 inhabitants is made possible because water from the Andes feeds the San Pedro river allowing green growth in the middle of a desert. We arrived early in the…
Chile is an extremely long and extremely narrow country. Stretching for 4,300km north to south (which is almost the distance from Norway to Nigeria!) and yet an average of just 180km wide east to west, Chile is one of the most geographically and climatically unique countries in the world. It’s basically a perfect geography textbook…
On our second full-day tour we visited Vinapu, Ahu Uri A Urenga, Puna Pao Quarry, Ahu Akivi, and ended the day at Tahai Ceremonial Complex. We also headed to the top of Rano Kau volcano to take in the views of Hanga Roa, as well as look down into the crater itself. We were also…
Easter Island. Rapanui. Isla de Pascua. The island with the mysterious moai statues. This lone volcanic island, just 164km^2 in the Southeast Pacific Ocean is one of the most isolated places on the planet. It is over 2000 km from the next inhabited island, the Pitcairn’s, and over 3000km west of Chile. Just two flights…
Valparaiso is a labyrinth of hills, murals, stairways and funiculars overlooking a wide Pacific bay. It’s an odd combination of a gritty working port and a UNESCO World Heritage Site rolled into one. The city is spread across 42 steep hills or ‘cerros’ that rise abruptly from the Pacific Ocean. The upper hills are a…
Colette's Grand Detour 