Chile
By Laila Weir
Tri Valley Magazine,
January/February 2008 Issue

BEST-KNOWN FOR ITS WINE AND ITS EX-DICTATOR — WITH POET PABLO NERUDA AND PATAGONIA CLOSE SECONDS — CHILE IS A TALL, SKINNY RUNWAY MODEL OF A COUNTRY. IT CLINGS TO ALONG STRIP OF LAND ALONG THE PACIFIC OCEAN AT THE VERY BOTTOM OF THE AMERICAS, BOUNDED TO THE EAST BY THE JAGGED, OFTEN WHITE-TIPPED ANDES MOUNTAINS, AMONG THE HIGHEST IN THE WORLD.

That was most of what I knew about Chile when my fiancé and I moved here a couple of years ago. With the long map of Chile laid out before me, I didn’t even recognize the names of towns outside the capital of Santiago. So I set out to get to know my new home. But where to begin?

I began asking the locals I met one question: What’s your favorite place in this country of yours? The answers I got led me to board two planes. One took me north to the desert oasis of San Pedro de Atacama. The other carried me south to the misty and mythical islands of Chiloé.

To Chileans, both of these destinations are exceptions, places where they can escape the bustle of the capital, where almost a third of them live. But to the expatriate in their midst, these two special places seem somehow to capture the heart of the Chilean character, its love affair with the simple things in life (asados, i.e. barbecues, at a friend or family member’s house are the national pastime) and with the outdoors (those barbecue get-togethers are invariably held outside, even at night, even in winter).

SAN PEDRO DE ATACAMA
Magical. That’s the word Chileans have always used when telling me about San Pedro. An oasis in the middle of the world’s driest desert, it’s ground zero for visiting the natural and archeological wonders of the surrounding landscape.

Arriving in the village of San Pedro on the airport shuttle from the nearest town after an evening flight up from Santiago, you can’t help breathing deeply and looking up. It’s a sparsely populated corner of the world, where the air is clean and the stars overhead exist in astonishing abundance — astronomers come from all over the world to observe the skies here. There is a clarity and a darkness to the desert air that makes the lights and sounds emerging from San Pedro’s many restaurants seem to sparkle.

“There’s a mystical atmosphere, sort of spiritual,” says my friend Daniela Santelices. “People are calmer. We connect with nature and the stars.”

The oasis of San Pedro was long a stop on trade routes, from the early pre-Spanish cultures up until the mining days of early modern Chile. In the last century, its importance declined, but it has since regained significance as a tourist center. It is also a key archeological site due to the dry climate that has preserved the remains of indigenous cultures dating back 13,000 years. San Pedro itself is a charming, if tourist-ridden, little town laid out in the neat grid with square blocks and all streets perpendicular that was common during Spanish colonialism. Low adobe buildings run together in an unbroken line along unpaved roads. On the plaza, the town’s church gleams in whitewashed adobe. In the distanceare the peaks of the ever-present Andes, presided over by the extinct volcano Licancabur.

The restaurants here provide you with excellent dining in the evening, but San Pedro’s real charms lie outside of town, where the desert stretches out and then up into the mountains. These sights can be visited by car, but by far the easiest route is to join a tour led by a knowledgeable guide from one of the many agencies located along or just off the main drag. I choose the pricier-than-average but highly recommended Cosmo Andino.

The tour agency takes me on three day-trips. The first is to El Valle de la Luna, or Moon Valley, where minerals and sand form an alien landscape of infinite enough variety to convert any innocent who, like me, was inclined to think that most deserts are more or less the same. Our guide, Christian, leads us along a path carved through towering formations made of salt, in places turreted and rutted, but elsewhere as smooth and transparent as crystal.

The next morning, we visit the salt flats of El Salar to see colonies of flamingoes that flock to shallow lakes there, taking flight in frequent bursts of rose plumage. Later, we drive high into the foothills of the Andes and admire the still, breathtakingly turquoise lakes of the Altiplano, or high plains. Here, the altitude and resulting lower oxygen level make distances seem shorter and colors more brilliant. I feel I could reach out and touch the peaks of two volcanoes that look down on us.

On the third day we rise long before dawn to bundle up and board the tour bus for another trip high up into the mountains. When at last we arrive, we emerge in gray morning light into a field filled with columns of steam billowing into the cold morning air from holes in the rocky ground. Periodically, scalding water explodes from one or another, feeding colonies of neon-colored microorganisms that live around the openings. We’re at the Geysers del Tatio, the world’s highest geysers.

After the sun comes up, we warm up insome nearby hot springs. On the drive back, we see llamas and their smaller relatives, vicuñas.

With the tour finished the following day, I venture off without a tour guide to see the ruins of two indigenous villages. The first is the 12th Century Pukará de Quitor, a fortified village originally built for defense against a neighboring tribe. A series of walls and living spaces, all built of rocks reminiscent of Roman ruins, scale the side of a hill.

Later, I visit the sand-buried remains of Tulor, a once-important regional center dating back more than 2800 years ago. Interconnected, igloo-like adobe structures, well-preserved except for their missing roofs, peek out from the sand and provide insight into the lives of the long-lost original people of the Atacama Desert.

I leave San Pedro refreshed and I think I understand what Daniela meant when she told me that “there’s a special energy in that place.” The oasis is a portal into Chile’s desert treasures, but it is a world away from the mysteries of the country’s south. To begin to know those, I travel to a place that is, in terms of nature, architecture, and cuisine, the very opposite of this desert outpost.

CHILOÉ
You enter the world of Chiloé before you ever set foot on the main island of the archipelago. Instead, you’re drawn into it during the ferry ride that carries your bus or car over the Ancud Gulf from the mainland.

Here, you descend from the vehicle and savor the salty air that speaks of a fishing culture. Dolphins swimming nearby and sea birds swooping over-head seduce you with the simple beauty of island life. And the patience of the ferry crossing — a planned bridge has yet to materialize — prepares you for the traditional rural lifestyle.

Chiloé consists of one large island and a smattering of small islands and islets. Their interior is quilted in a patchwork of farmlands, well watered by frequent rains, where ox-drawn carts frequently trundle their burdens along side roads. The islands’ edges are lined with brightly painted fishing boats and palafitos, wooden houses built on stilts out over the water.

The towns consist of shingled timber houses decorated in whimsical gingerbread and bright colors perhaps designed to ward off the dreariness of the nearly year-round rain, but during summer instead reflect the welcome sun. Dotted around the archipelago are some 60 Jesuit churches, made all of wood in charming humility. Sixteen of them are UNESCO World Heritage monuments.

But as much as its aesthetic charms captivate me, Chiloé’s unique culture, the result of a history that caused it to develop separately from the rest of the country, is even more enthralling. There was an unprecedented mixing of Spanish settlers and indigenous groups after uprisings drove the Spanish out of the rest of southern Chile, leaving the island colonists cut off from theempire. Later, when Chile fought for independence, Chiloé was the last hold-out loyal to Spain.

“It’s one of the most unique places in Chile,” comments Kristina Schreck of the tourism board, Turismo Chile. “The culture is very different and the food is different.”

This is a land where Catholicism and local traditions have melded to create a distinctive mythology, yielding a world populated by legendary creatures and punctuated by saints´ festivals. Pincoya, an incredibly beautiful goddess whose dance predicts the abundance of the sea harvest, and Caleuche, a ghost ship crewed by shipwrecked sailors, are among the many island legends. “Chiloé is very mythical – it’s where all the mythology of Chile is,” says my friend Daniela.

The time to visit Chiloé is during the southern summer of January and February, when the rain lets up and allows the sun through. It’s also festival season, offering visitors the best opportunity to participate in the culture, otherwise elusive to tourists, and to sample island cuisine — heavy on seafood, of course.

I choose to go to the town of Achao on one of the smaller islands for its annual festival and boat procession in honor of Saint Peter, patron saint of fishermen. There, I find a county fair complete with demonstrations of traditional crafts like wool weaving and booths serving typical foods. Most famous among these is curanto — seafood, meat and potatoes all cooked together with hot stones in a pit in the ground.

On the main day of the festival, a parade carries an icon of the saint from the traditional wooden church to the port, where fishermen wait, their boats decorated with brightly colored banners and garlands of flowers. Festival goers board the boats and the fishermen motor out for a procession around the bay as the music floats across the water. Later, Chile’s iconic band Inti-Illimaniwill entertain us with folk-inspired music in a seaside concert.

Sitting on one of the decorated boats, after garnering the permission of one of the shy fishermen who speaks a hard to understand rural Spanish dialect, I feel perhaps I am making some progress towards my goal of knowing my adopted home. But it has only left me wanting more.

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