Desert, Island and Metropolis: A 3-Stop Visit to Chile

Chile is one of those countries you would need months to explore fully. Since it’s 2,653 miles long, this skinny country stretches through all sorts of geographic terrain, from one of the world’s driest places to jaw-dropping icy mountains. So, if you’re only going for 10 days, you’ll have to choose just a few places to explore. Here’s a peek into Chilean life via three places I visited in March this year.

Atacama Desert

I wasn’t sure what to expect from the enormous Atacama Desert in northern Chile near the Bolivian border. And it didn’t look like much when I arrived in the mining town of Calama—kind of like a vast vacant dirt lot. But as we got away from town and deeper into the desert, I saw interesting rock forms and landscapes.

I was staying at Explora Atacama, a luxury lodge in the touristy town of San Pedro de Atacama. San Pedro is all dirt streets lined with adobe walls. It is very picturesque, and it is very easy to get lost as one street resembles another. Explora is on the edge of town. The lodge is a beautiful, tranquil place. The room blocks are mission-style, white stucco with blue and green doors. The grounds are landscaped with desert plants, and guests can luxuriate in a series of three pools, several Jacuzzis, and saunas. Explora provides delicious meals with tons of vegan choices and fresh juices. Quinoa grows in the nearby Andes, and I ate a lot of it there. Sure, other folks might be yakking about Chilean wines, but drinking is not necessary to enjoy this desert.

Every afternoon, guests convened in a special area to meet with guides and discuss their programs for the next day. Choices included hiking, biking, horseback riding, and overland excursions in vans. Since I only had two full days there, I mostly wound up in vans to cover as much ground as possible. The desert contains many different ecosystems. I visited salt flats too dry for any critters to live, flamingo-filled wetlands, and a geyser field at an altitude of more than 14,000 feet. Being a sea-level dweller, slowly walking around geysers and then climbing back into the van felt like a workout.

One of my favorite parts of visiting Atacama was the many impromptu wildlife sightings. In addition to hundreds of flamingos, I saw guanaco (the wild version of llamas), vicuna (wild alpacas), donkeys, lizards, a rodent called a viscacha, which has rabbit ears and a squirrel tail, and two big foxes!

One day, I went on a tour led by Nicolas Millacura. It was just a couple from Delaware and me. We hiked in a canyon where huge cacti grew, with a rare river running through the desert, complete with a waterfall. “Want to go down lower?” Nico asked us, indicating a rock wall alongside the falls. It wasn’t so high that slipping would be fatal, but a wrong step could easily result in broken ankles. I looked at the wall and didn’t know where to start. “Just watch and put your hands and feet where I put mine,” Nico instructed. I attempted to follow him step by step and handhold by handhold. It was one of those times in life when it’s not scary as long as you trust the person you’re following. An exercise in faith. After getting me safely to the bottom, he returned and helped the next person.

At one lagoon where we were birdwatching, a solid black flag few beside the Chilean flag. The black flag is a protest flag, as lithium mining is threatening indigenous residents’ water supply.  This is one of those issues that makes you realize how interconnected the world is, as lithium is a crucial component for cell phones, laptops, electric cars, e-bikes, electric toothbrushes, and vaping devices, to name a few. The Atacama Desert is also known as an international fast fashion dump. I wanted to see the 60,000-ton mountain of discarded clothing, but that was in a different part of the ginormous desert. While the Atacama Desert sounds very remote and apart from my everyday life in Oregon, we all wear clothes and use our phones nonstop.

Stargazing is the best kind of nightlife in the Atacama Desert. Scientists have some amazing equipment out here that’s not open to the public. I got to look through Explora’s high-powered telescope to see some stars and the surface of the moon.

Rapa Nui

After visiting Atacama, I flew five hours west of mainland Chile to Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island. I’d been curious about this remote and mysterious place since childhood. Settled by Polynesian voyagers maybe a thousand years ago (Less? More? Without recorded history, it’s hard to say), this green, hilly island is a part of Chile. Sort of. Many of the people claim Polynesian descent, and it’s a world unto itself out there in the Pacific.

One of my favorite Explora Rapa Nui guides, Maeva Tuki, talked about how amazing it was that Polynesian explorers ever discovered this place. “They were lucky they found the island, which is a real challenge in the middle of this huge ocean.” In addition to luck, they had navigation techniques like the stellar compass. “The stars are always there, so they can guide you in the ocean. That’s how you know you are not going in circles in the sea,” she said. Early navigators looked for seabirds, changing currents, and floating leaves to signify that land was near.

If you’ve ever heard of Rapa Nui or Easter Island, you might picture an island empty except for huge and enigmatic stone heads. The enormous heads are here, all right. But about 8,000 people also call it home. I found myself overjoyed to meet them. “I’ve never met somebody from Rapa Nui before!” I gushed like an idiot at Tavi, my first afternoon’s guide at Explora Rapa Nui. Tavi led my group of ten or so hikers as we walked down from the lodge to see our first moai or giant stone head. In between stories of his family’s roots on the island, he gave us Moai 101. The giant stone heads were carved sometime between 1100 and 1650 (estimates vary greatly) to honor village leaders who passed away. People somehow hefted the gigantic rocks—there are several theories on how this was done—across the island and placed them as sentinels watching over their former villages. At some point by the early 1800s, islanders knocked down all the heads, probably in a civil war. Most of the heads are still kissing the dirt. But anthropologists have reconstructed a few and are they ever incredible when you stand up and look into their faces.

My five days at Explora Rapa Nui were quite posh. The lodge arranged daily activities, which for me were mostly hiking and learning about the local culture. As a solo sober traveler, I felt at home, except for some discomfort during multicourse dinners. Explora is the kind of place where diners linger, oohing and ahhing over Chilean wine. Sometimes, I ate with other people, but sometimes, I felt conspicuously alone. Explora offered beautifully prepared vegan dishes. And I visited the bar several times daily to try the juice of the day and to get my water bottle filled with sparkling water for fancy hiking.

While I appreciated the anthropological and archeological insights of my guides, I also wanted some quiet time with the moai. I got that one morning when I went to Ahu Tongariki for sunrise, just Maeva and me. I brought my yoga mat and did sun salutations while watching the sky turn pink and orange as the sun rose behind the stone heads. It was beautiful and magical.

Santiago

Living the high life as a hosted travel writer at Explora Atacama and Explora Rapa Nui was awesome. But in Santiago, I was on my own dime, so I investigated lower-cost places to stay. I had two stopovers while jet-setting around Chile. During my first, I arrived in Santiago in the late afternoon and left the next morning, allowing me one evening to hang out. In that case, I stayed close to the airport. The second stopover, I had just over 24 hours, so I ventured into a trendier downtown neighborhood.

I booked a private room with a shared bath at Hostal Sol y Luna in Santiago’s Pudaheul neighborhood for my shorter stopover. This was an interesting experience as it’s one of the poorer, non-touristy areas of town. My room was only 30 bucks, the hosts were terrific, and my bedspread featured a giant pug face! Plus, I got to play with Gordita, the resident dog.

On my second stopover, I splurged on a private room with a private bath at Eco-Hostal Tambo Verde for about 70 dollars. This one is on a quiet residential street in the hip Bellavista neighborhood. No dog to play with, but the neighbor’s cat likes to hang out in the large garden space. There’s even an on-site fair trade coffee shop. Tambo Verde is convenient for sightseeing. I walked to the enormous nearby urban park and climbed San Cristobal Hill, a popular hike for city views. The park has lots to do, including a zoo, botanical garden, and huge seasonal swimming pools. A giant Virgin Mary statue stands atop the hill. I hung out in the sanctuary of the Immaculate Conception, which is peaceful and good for people-watching. I took a gondola down.

Sober people need not feel sad about missing out on Santiago’s bar scene when they find out this city has TWO cat cafes! I visited both in one afternoon. El Mundo de Dalí Cat Café had a prettier garden, but I found Casa de la gata Horacia a better deal, and the cats were friendlier—at least when I visited. There are no guarantees on when a cat is going to be friendly or not.

A Good Sober Destination

Sure, you might run into the emphasis on Chilean wine here and there. But between looking for wildlife, bewildering locals with my attempts at Spanish, and learning about the culture, I had plenty of stimulation without thinking about substances. I hope to return and see more of this varied country.

Disclaimer: While this is not a sponsored post, Explora hosted Teresa during her Atacama and Rapa Nui stays. As always, The Sober Curator operates independently, which doesn’t influence our coverage.

About Teresa Bergen

Teresa Bergen had the great good fortune to quit drinking very young and has enjoyed long-term sobriety. She lives in Portland, Oregon but travels all over the world as a travel writer. She also works in the oral history field, helping to document and preserve history. Learn more HERE.

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