Chile: To the End of the World

Oh my. What''s this? A new blog post? Huzzah! This time, week 3 of my Chilean leg, which saw me go from the rather soggy but beautiful island of Chiloe to the city of Punta Arenas in Chile's far south.

Um... words?

That is literally all my journal has for this day. I wrote a lot. Y'know, what with it being NaNoWriMo and all. I have vague recollections of discussing Bonfire Night with someone. Welp, that was an interesting day, clearly.

You know there's sea lions down there, right?

Fortunately, I was rescued from my NaNoWriMo overload on Sunday by some of the girls at the hostel who invited me to join them for a trip to Muelle de las Almas on Chiloe's west coast. Having lost most of my week to, admittedly very enjoyable, writing, I jumped at the chance.

After a quick stop at the bus company to book my ticket back to Puerto Montt the next day, the five of us piled onto a little local bus to Cucao on the west coast. An hour or so later we arrived in the village, dropped the locals and then continued on down a very bumpy, unsealed road along the coast.

Another quick stop at the "entrance" to the park, where we paid our 1,000 peso entry and then back onto the bus for an ever more bumpy ride to the start of the trail. I reckon it probably took us nearly two hours altogether from Castro and even though I don't generally get travel sick, that bus ride wasn't entirely pleasant.

Once off the bus, everything improved. The sun was shining, the sky was clear and the track was... muddy.

Very muddy. Off we tramped, trying our best to avoid the worst patches. A few slips and slides later, we finally emerged from the shrubbery to this wonderful view.

And then on down to Muelle de las Almas, which is an art installation. Literally "the wharf of souls", it relates to indigenous Chiloe and Mapuche mythology (of which more info HERE), but also acts as a memorial of sorts to the victims of the enormous 1960 Valdivia earthquake - at a magnitude of 9.4-6, the largest ever recorded.

I don't understand enough Spanish to translate the info board, but I appreciated it nonetheless. It sort of reminds me of Cape Reinga, which in Maori mythology is the last place souls go before passing on to the next world.

I would have loved to have sat and admired the view for a while, but the wharf itself was overtaken with people taking their delightful Insta-ready photos and selfies. So I wandered on down the cliff a bit and discovered that on a rock just off shore were a whole load of sea lions. The rest of my group hadn't even noticed them. Even the guy we'd got talking to on the bus hadn't seen them and he was standing right next to me.

Personally, I thought they were pretty easy to spot. They were making plenty of noise...

Anyhoo, once the girls were finished with their selfies and whatnot we headed back up the hill. There's only one bus a day and we didn't really fancy missing it. We did find time for a quick detour over to the cliff overlooking the next bay, which was equally gorgeous...

Until I pointed out that there weren't any sea lions on that side and I realised that the girls hadn't known there were sea lions full stop. Oops. Maybe I should have mentioned it before we left the wharf? My bad.

After clambering back up the muddy hill, we piled back on the bus and settled in for our drive back to Castro. I fell asleep. Clearly the fresh air had done me good.

And then I immediately sat back down at the hostel and wrote another 2,000+ words. Just because.

Time for a taxi

The following morning I lazed around for a couple of hours before lugging my bags back up the enormous hill to Castro town centre in order to get a bus to Puerto Montt. Here is a photo I took of the palafitos - stilt houses - along the estuary. My hostel was one of them.

An uneventful 4 hour bus journey to Puerto Montt ensued. I hopped off the bus in the city and promptly realised that I'd forgotten to take a note of how to get to the hostel. I had an address, but without a map, that was pretty useless. It being nearly 3pm and me not having eaten since breakfast, I popped into a cafe at the terminal, hoping to use the WiFi.

The WiFi failed to work. The burger was nice though. Unwilling to just wander in the vague direction I thought the hostel lay in, I grabbed a taxi instead. Woo. At least the taxi was cheap.

Super friendly owners at the hostel. Improving mood was then ruined by Google Docs sabotaging every attempt I made at writing. I don't think it appreciated the by then nearly 70,000 words I'd written and kept glitching and crashing. Stupid app.

Patagonia Bound

After a delicious breakfast of some sort of sweet, syrupy toast made by my American host, I hopped on yet another bus, this time to Puerto Montt's airport. A few hours later, I was on a flight bound for Punta Arenas in Chile's extreme south and the hub for all things Patagonia.

Among odd things that happened, I saw a dachshund in a crate going round the luggage claim and was then told by the shuttle sales man that my Spanish accent was quite good. I suppose if my actual Spanish is bad, I might as well make up for it with a good accent...

I then spent the evening watching the US election results come in and wallowing in despair with my Dutch roommate.

What have you done?

OK, so this day's journal entry begins with "WTF AMERICA?!" and I think that adequately describes my response on waking up to find Trump as president-elect. Terrifying thought.

I decided to deal with this by taking a long walk in the fresh air and so set off first into Punta Arenas city centre and then along the rather blustery seafront.

I found a whole jetty covered in cormorants, which is probably the closest I'll find to a "case of shags".

Having walked several miles, I looped back around and popped to the supermarket to stock up on groceries, acquiring some delicious fresh bread in the process.

And then it rained on me. I was rather drippy by the time I got back to the hostel and was quite happy to spend the remainder of the wet and windy afternoon writing.

Rain. No rain. Rain. No rain?

On Thursday morning, having consulted Google for things to do in the city, I decided to take the nearly 4 mile walk out to the Museo Nao Victoria. This should have been wonderful - the museum is home to replicas of Magellan's Nao Victoria, Shackleton's James Caird, the Beagle and the Goleta Ancud (which, having visited Ancud the week before, would have been cool to see). I love maritime history and ships are fascinating.

I didn't make it there. I'd walked perhaps 2.5 miles and turned around to take a photo of the city. As I did, I saw this enormous bloody black cloud looming up behind me.

Having been caught in the rain the day before, I didn't really fancy doing it again, especially considering the museum was pretty much all outdoors and I'd have to walk the almost 4 miles back to the hostel when I was done.

So I wussed out and walked back. Guess what? I didn't get rained on at all. Although it did rain that afternoon while I was swearing and arguing with Google Docs over its insistence on sabotaging every single writing session...

I also started looking into the possibility of going to Puerto Williams for a night or two. The town is pretty much as far south as you can go in Chilean Patagonia without getting a boat and I was seriously considering getting the $130 return flight. Seemed like a good way to see Tierra del Fuego, a region I've wanted to visit since it first appeared in the Brian Jacques book Castaways of the Flying Dutchman when I was... 12, maybe?

Decisions, decisions

Adamant I'd actually do something instead of sitting around all day, I spent Friday morning in the Museo Regional Magallanes, which is housed in a rather swanky old mansion near the Plaza de Armas. So swanky, in fact, that the lady at the entrance handed me these beauties to cover my boots.

So stylish. It's also yet another of Chile's free museums. I'm loving this. The main floor is partly a display of the rooms as they would have been in the early 1900s when one of the city's most influentional families - the Menendez-Brauns - lived there and partly an exhibition of Patagonia history. I liked the study most.

Downstairs is, again, partly restored to the service area as it was in the early 1900s and also houses a very small temporary exhibition. I was mostly amused by the British products in the kitchen, of which I failed to get decent photo courtesy of the bad light. There was Colman's mustard, among others.

I then spent the afternoon flitting between reading the first book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series (which has me hooked), writing MORE WORDS and still trying to decide if I should go to Puerto Williams. I was leaving that decision rather late - I had a flight booked to Santiago for Monday afternoon.


So, will I end up in Puerto Williams? Will I stop writing all the words?

And more importantly, aren't there penguins down here?

Chile: Rain and Writing on Chiloe

Onwards with my attempt to bring the blog back up to date!

Following my five days of laziness in Santiago and a somewhat soggy arrival in Ancud, here's how my first week on the beautiful island of Chiloe went.

A fellow WriMo!

My first full day in Ancud began like the previous day. Rain. Just a little bit soggy... Fortunately, it brightened up around lunchtime, so I took a stroll into the town and had a poke around the craft market where I was amazed that no one tried to get me to buy anything. I was even more impressed that I didn't buy anything, although that was largely due to practical reasons - there were some really beautiful ponchos and cardigans, but I just don't have enough room in my bag. Ugh.

On my way back to the hostel I stopped in at the little regional museum. To my utter glee, it was free. Seems that Chile is a bit bigger on the free museums than anywhere else I've been so far.

The museum is only small but has a really good selection from the history of settlement on Chiloe, plus this ship, which is the schooner Ancud.

It carried Chilotes down to Patagonia to establish the first settlements down there. That's pretty cool. The museum also has this blue whale skeleton, because skeletons...

Everything is in Spanish only, but I impressed myself by getting the gist of most of it. I've also cheated and downloaded the Spanish dictionary into my Google Translate, so when I got stuck that was super helpful.

After a nice lunch and some more writing at the hostel, I set off again, this time with Lizzie and Heather, a couple of girls from the hostel. First stop, the little harbour.

Then a short walk up the hill to Fuerte San Antonio. To be fair, it's not much of a fort - more of a gun emplacement. There didn't seem to be any info boards, so I can't tell you much about it. There's a low wall and some cannon, hence why it strikes me as a gun emplacement only.

There's some gorgeous views out over the bay though, especially since the weather had cleared up a lot since the morning.

From there, we meandered through the streets of Ancud and on up a dirt road to a view point. I'm not sure it's an official view point. There's masts on top. But hey, the view was pretty good.

And then on back to the hostel, where we nearly but not quite avoided the incoming rain. Wine was drunk and Lizzie and I got talking about NaNoWrimo. I thought it was pretty cool to bump into another WriMo like that. Heather was just bemused by the idea of writing 50,000 words in a month...

Bus Trippers Galore!

The following morning, determined to get some fresh air and not spend all day writing like I really wanted to, I headed back up to Fuerte San Antonio. It had been pretty quiet when we went up the previous day and I figured the views would be nice inspiration material.

Of course, it was Sunday and the place was heaving with bus trippers. For some reason, I'd decided to try my hand at sketching the bay and the number of people trying to peer at my notebook was most disconcerting.

I'm not an artist, but I was pretty pleased with my sketch. I've always preferred landscapes and considering I haven't drawn properly since... god knows. Uni, maybe?

Anyways, with my peace and quiet ruined by the noisy, nosy bus trippers, I returned to the hostel and gave in to the urge to write instead. Now there's a creative outlet I'm actually sort of OK with. I suspect I lost my afternoon creating basic language rules for fictional cultures...

LURGIES

On Monday morning, the lurgies I'd been fighting since I landed in Santiago, probably brought on by the recycled air on the plane, struck with full force. Headache, streaming nose, sore throat. Yep. Just what I needed the day before NaNoWriMo kicked off.

I downed a couple of paracetamol to deal with the aches and decided to brave the rain in the hope that the fresh air would make me feel better. It also gave me an excuse to wear my fancy alpaca gloves from Peru.

Unfortunately, while I normally quite like walking in the rain, lurgies combined with torrential downpour and wind conspired to make me feel even worse. I retreated to the hostel, downed a couple of mugs of tea, did a quick run to the supermarket for tissues and extra tea bags and then spent the afternoon getting my brain prepped for NaNoWriMo.

And then 9pm came around.

See, NaNoWriMo kicks off at midnight, November 1st. But I'm going to be switching time zones at least once if not more this month. So instead of confusing my brain I decided to just stick with my usual UK time and start at midnight by that clock. Which meant 9pm Chile time, much to the confusion of a couple of the guys at the hostel who'd insisted on knowing what I was doing typing so many words.

I think I managed 3,000 words before crawling, snuffling, into bed. Not bad considering the mushiness in my head.

WRITE ALL THE WORDS

The contents of my journal for today run as follows:

• 20k day
• that is all
• dead

Which is pretty much true. I'd set myself the challenge of writing 20,000 words on the first day of NaNoWriMo. Just a personal challenge - an attempt to pass my personal best of 15,000 words in a day. In between a fight with my bluetooth keyboard (which changed settings and wouldn't let me use the A key for half an hour), lurgies and far too much tea I achieved that goal.

It killed my brain. To my complete surprise, when I read back through those 20,000+ words, most of it was of a decent standard, not the garbage I'd thought I was writing. Well done, me.

I think it freaked a couple of my hostel-mates out though. Sorry, guys. I type fairly quick and my brain, when it's on a roll, works pretty fast too. Also, I just spent October doing ALL the planning.

Yep. NaNoWriMo ate my soul.

Words, rain, words, bus, words, sleep

After the madness of that 20k day, I'd rather expected to take it easy on the Tuesday. Instead, Chiloe continued with its spate of bad weather, so I didn't feel too guilty about doing some more writing.

I also had to make a run to the bus station first thing in the morning to sort out a bus to my next destination further south on the island. Congratulations to my word-addled brain for conducting the entire transaction in Spanish despite the strange (and persistent) urge to use German when I get stuck.

With nearly a whole day to waste before my bus, I poured out another 8,000 words of mostly coherent novel while outside it rained. And rained. And rained some more. Any thoughts of taking a break and going for a walk were rained off.

And then I got on a bus. It rained. And then it stopped, which was nice because I had to wander up and down a street in Dalcahue for a good ten minutes before I found the sign for my hostel. The very friendly owner spoke no English and my brain was so mushy by that point that I really struggled to grasp everything she told me.

Fortunately, while the common area was heaving, I had the dorm to myself, so I jammed out another 2,000 words, ate some chocolate biscuits and passed out for the night.

It's on stilts...

Determined to take a break from writing and revive my poor, overworked brain, I went for a stroll to the bus office the next morning, intending to head to Castro as soon as possible so I could have a wander around the town and get away from my keyboard.

The ticket lady told me I'd be better off getting one of the public busses - they were 100 pesos more expensive (an entire... 15p?), but they ran every 15 minutes or so instead of the sole daily bus my by then usual bus company ran.

So I toddled back to the hostel, thinking I'd pick up my bag and go. And hit a snag in the form of the keys not working. I didn't understand this. The owner had given me the keys that morning and told me she'd be back at 12. So I tried the keys. Both of them. Neither of them worked. Believe me, I tried them repeatedly.

Nothing in Dalcahue seemed to be open despite it being nearly 11am, so I sat on the step like a ninny waiting for someone to arrive and let me in. Luckily for me, the cleaning lady turned up around 11am and was able to let me in. She seemed rather amused to find me on the step and more so when I tried to explain in minimal Spanish that the key wouldn't work.

I had to wait for the owner to get back anyway, because I hadn't paid, so I managed a bit more writing while I waited. Once paid, I grabbed my bags and wandered off in search of the bus.

Up to this point, I hadn't used any public transport in Chile. Everywhere I went in Santiago had been within walking distance, as had everything in Ancud. Still, the little buses looked to be fairly well maintained and for 800 pesos (about £1), one would take me 20 minutes or so down the road to Castro.

So I piled into the tiny bus, rucksack balanced on my knees. The driver was surprisingly safe, which was lovely, although I did wonder whether the presence of one of Chile's carabineros might have had something to do with it - Chile's police are supposedly the most trustworthy in South America.

I clambered off the bus again in Castro town centre and began the 20 minute trek to my hostel. I was not prepared for the massive hill, although I suppose I should be glad I only had to go down it.

It rained. A lot.

Bag dumped in my room, I set about looking for a new writing space. I found a lovely one in the common area, in the bit of the hostel that sat on stilts over the estuary.

I'd just got everything set up - tablet, keyboard, cuppa, biscuits, y'know, all the important things - when I realised all the plug sockets were on the other side of the narrow room. Ah.

So I rearranged the room a bit... Just a bit. Just... shuffled the table across slightly. Just far enough so that I could run the power cord from my tablet to the socket. I mean, I could hardly have my tablet die in the middle of an important scene, could I?

Yup. NaNoWriMo. Taking over my life again. Which is why I'd written a grand total of 40,000 words by the end of day 3. Have I mentioned that the goal is to write 50,000 words over the month? Oops.

GREEN BAR!

My first week on Chiloe ended much as it had begun. With rain. An awful lot of rain. I wasn't even going to attempt to go out in it - it was coming in sideways past the windows in the hostel.

So I wrote instead.

And then the rain eased off for half an hour, so I went and restocked my groceries. Oh, and I took a photo of Castro's very funky yellow and purple church.

Very funky. Although thinking about it... I think that photo might actually be from another day... y'know, given the blue sky... my bad.

And then the rain returned, so I wrote some more.

And a bit more.

And at 7:30pm, as attested by a rather overexcited post on Facebook, I passed 50,000 words and my tracker on the NaNoWriMo website turned green. Yes, I am a sad, sad person, but I was very pleased that I'd managed to write 50,000 words of my current fantasy novel in 4 days. So there.

This may also have completely fried my brain, so after a cuppa I had an early night, like the old lady I am at heart.

Hopefully, week 3 of my Chilean adventure won't be quite so consumed by NaNoWriMo. A few more days on Chiloe and then I'm heading down to Patagonia and the city of Punta Arenas.

MUST NOT WRITE MORE WORDS

Chile: Lazy Days in Santiago

OK, so I've been utterly useless at keeping the blog up to date over the last few weeks. I have a few hours free before I go exploring later, so let's see if I can get it back up to speed, shall we?

I believe I left off with my arrival in Santiago from Peru. OK.

Where did the day go?

After my panicking about missing flights and/or having to run through the airport at Lima, I arrived safely in Santiago, capital of Chile, at a ridiculous time on Saturday morning. Passport stamped, I managed to get a shuttle into the city after another moment of panic when my card wouldn't work - note to self: it helps if I remember to tell my bank where I am.

To my sleepy delight, my bed was available when I checked in to the hostel just before 8am. I crawled under the sheets, figuring I'd snooze for a few hours and then in search of food and things to do.

When I finally woke up, having slept through a whole series of alarms, it was nearly 4pm. Oops. It is a very long time since I've slept a whole day away like that. And I was still knackered. Fortunately for me, it was pasta night at the hostel, so I spent the rest of the evening mooching and chatting with the other folks. I should maybe not have drunk the two glasses of red wine with my pasta, but hey, I was already sleepy so it didn't make that much difference.

Donde esta el museo?

A delightful roommate woke me up at 4am, complete with slamming the door and turning the lights on. Ugh.

On the plus side, Hostal Providencia provides an excellent breakfast, so I stuffed my face with fresh bread and that delicious cereal that turns the milk chocolatey that I haven't had since I was little.

Happily full, I scanned the web for things to see in Santiago and settled on the regional museum. Off I tramped, getting a little bit lost along the way, before ending up in the Plaza de Armas. Right. So where's the museum? Should be facing the Plaza. Can't find it. There's a sign for it, but the gate is shut and locked. How odd.

At the time, I thought maybe I was looking in the wrong place. Afterwards, I discovered there was an enormous strike going on in Chile and I'd clearly just timed it wrong.

Foiled by the closed museum and with no idea what else to go and prod, I returned to the hostel in the hopes of booking a bus to Chiloe for the following week. All went well - I managed to navigate the site in Spanish, select my bus, my seat got as far as the payment page...

Declined. What? At this point, I still hadn't realised I'd forgotten to tell my bank I was in Chile. So I tried my other card. Also declined.

Buggeration. Fine, I thought, I'll just try again tomorrow. I sat down to plan some writing instead, what with NaNoWriMo fast approaching. I can't remember what I wrote, but the note in my journal just says "writing fail". Oops. This is followed by the comment "FAIL DAY :)"

Clearly I was in an odd mood.

Spanish success!

On the Monday morning, I had planned to go on a free walking tour. I slept in instead. It was glorious. Plus, I still woke up in time to partake of the lovely breakfast. Nom.

Having missed the walking tour and with only a couple of days until I needed to get to Chiloe, I decided to take a stroll to the bus terminal in the hope of booking my ticket in person. Armed with Google Translate (just in case), I approached the desk, staffed by two friendly looking ladies.

Me: el autobus para Ancud?
Ticket ladies: *confused*
Me: *realises the C in Ancud is hard - Ankud not Ansud* er... Ancud?
Ticket ladies: *no longer confused, polite nodding*
Me: um... Jueves?

OK, so my Spanish is broken, poorly pronounced (on occasion) and I mostly make do with using the few words I know in new ways. But in this case, it worked. Success! I had a ticket to Ancud and I hadn't used a word of English. Well done, me.

Ticket booked, I figured I might as well have another wander around the city centre in the hopes of finding something to do. Yeah, that didn't happen. I ended up in Starbucks, where I once again had to spell my name for the guy at the counter because Spanish speakers really struggle with Zoe. It's just a name that doesn't work very well with Spanish pronunciation rules.

Back at the hostel, I apparently wrote a lot, going by the journal note that reads "WRITE ALL THE THINGS :)". So far, my time in Santiago was shaping up to be very chilled out and amazingly, the travel bit of my brain wasn't guilt tripping me about not doing much. Maybe I was still recovering from the bug that had screwed up my time in Arequipa...

Oh god, they're everywhere

The following morning, I once again had such a leisurely breakfast that I missed the walking tour. Ah well, I'd found other things to do, beginning with a beautiful stroll in the sunshine through Parque Forestal.

This led me straight up to El Museo del Bellas Artes, which is a great place. Some really interesting pieces, although I will admit that I laughed at the expression on this San Sebastian.

The only drawback was the fact that the museum was crawling with school groups who seemed to appear out of nowehere every time I found a quiet spot. Even the main hall, host to this odd disembodied ship, was not safe.

Having spent a good couple of hours perusing the collections, I made myself comfy on a bench outside in the sun, away from the annoying children and tried to find my inner artist. This largely consisted of drawing different houses for all of the cultures that I've been working on for the upcoming NaNoWriMo. I think I should stick to writing - drawing has never been my forte. Still, it was lovely to sit in the sun for a while.

The NaNoWriMo theme continued when I got back to the hostel, resulting in lots of rambling about plot and character creation. My planning sessions have a habit of getting a bit too in depth. For example, I'm not entirely sure why I really need to know what sort of boats are used across the different regions of my fictional world. But I worked it out anyway...

Free museum? What is this madness?

Still too fond of my bed and the delicious breakfast to get up early enough for the walking tour, I took myself to the Centro Cultural La Moneda on Wednesday morning. There I found an excellent exhibition of artefacts from China's Forbidden City and, because I arrived before midday, it was free!

I've missed free museums. There were some really beautiful pieces in the exhibition, my favourites including this tiny teapot.

And this badly photographed sword, mostly for the fact that it had a jade grip, which isn't something I've seen on swords before.

Taking photos of all the military objects definitely wasn't anything to do with inspiration for writing...

The centre is also home to a shop (and accompanying exhibition) of artesan crafts from the Aymara and Mapuche peoples of Chile. Oddly, I don't think I have any photos from in there, but the range of colours you can get on alpacas is pretty amazing and that's even before the wool is dyed.

My notes for the day then say "probably more NaNoing." I promise, NaNoWriMo isn't taking over my life in any way, shape or form. Definitely not...

I get breakfast?!

My final day in Santiago was something of a write off. I did nothing all morning, strolled to the city centre around lunch time, did a bit of Christmas shopping (woo, organised) and then returned to the hostel to write away the afternoon.

At 7:30pm, I arrived back at the bus terminal, far too early for my bus and proceeded to watch every single bus for Ancud like a hawk, just in case it was mine. When it finally turned up, I was surprised to find it so roomy. I'd booked the cheapest option - just a standard coach. But it had legroom. Decent legroom. And curtains. And a conductor who came around first to ask if I wanted breakfast in the morning and later to give me a blanket and pillow.

Breakfast? Oh my. So I actually slept well, not the broken sleep I've previously experienced on overnight buses.

Where did the sun go?

The following morning, the conductor duly appeared with my breakfast - a ham sandwich and a glass of coffee. I don't like coffee, but like a genius I'd forgotten to fill my water bottle before I left Santiago. With no other options for hydration, I drank it. Through a straw, for some reason...

And found that, actually, it wasn't too bad. It was relatively sweet, which might have had something to do with it.

After a short stop in Puerto Montt, the bus trundled onwards to Chiloe, Chile's largest island. A quick hop on the RO-RO ferry and then on to the town of Ancud in the island's north west. The weather, which had been great in Santiago and, indeed, at Puerto Montt, took a turn for the wet.

Admittedly, when I finally got off the nice comfy bus in Ancud, the rain had stopped, but it was overcast and just a little bit nippy. I spent the rest of the morning sheltering in the hostel before wenturing out in search of groceries.

I also found that the hostel has an awesome room with beautiful views over the bay.

It immediately became my writing room. It was warm, quiet and had good views. What wasn't there to love? Of course, that meant I spent the entire afternoon doing planning for NaNoWriMo yet again. Oops. In my defence, it got a bit yucky in Ancud again later on...


All right, so my first week in Chile was much like my last week in Peru - very laid back and not hugely exciting. But I did see and do things. I'm not sure the same will be said for next week - NaNoWriMo has a habit of taking over my brain.

And will the weather improve on Chiloe?

Destination Daydreams: Chile

Chile. Long, thin and deceptively huge. Over 2,500 miles from top to bottom but on average little more than 100 miles across.

That's pretty big. And I currently only have 2 and a bit weeks set aside to explore it. Here goes.

I want to see Patagonia. Because... well, because it's cropped up in so many nature documentaries and it looks so beautiful and wild and I imagine you could just lose yourself there for a while. Besides, it has glaciers and I'm all up for seeing some more glaciers.

I also have plans to explore Tierra Del Fuego, the very southern reaches of Patagonia. Mostly because it came up in a book I read years ago and I want to see it for myself.

Of course, Chile being enormously long, getting around is going to be interesting. I've looked at flights from the capital, Santiago, to Punta Arenas, which seems to be the gateway town for Patagonia. Reasonably priced for the distance, but I'm wondering if it can be done another way. It is possible to get a bus, but a quick search seems to suggest it goes through Argentina and I'm not sure I can be doing with that malarkey. Oh, and it takes 24 hours...

Adventure vs sanity... hmm...

I'm getting ahead of myself though. I'm assuming I'll go straight from Santiago to Punta Arenas, which is silly because that would miss out a whole raft of interesting places in the middle. So let's look at those, shall we?

Heading south from Santiago, I'd like to explore the Lake District mostly for the beautiful views, but I'd also like to check out the city of Valdivia which got hit by an enormous earthquake in 1960 and looks like a really cool place to wander round.

Still moving south, Chiloe looks like an interesting area - an island just cut off from the mainland by a fairly narrow channel. Seems to have an interesting culture of its own. In fact, the whole south-central region of the country looks pretty appealing.

Maybe what I should do, then, is destination hop from Santiago to Punta Arenas by bus - almost certainly having adventures and yet maintaining my sanity - and then catch a flight back north for my onwards travel from Santiago? Yes? Yes.

Aside from exploring the southern end of the country (and the continent), the roads from Punta Arenas seem to be the only way to access Torres del Paine National Park. I'm not entirely sure what I'd want to do in the National Park - I'm not the type to go on multi-day hikes - but to see the gorgeous scenery would be amazing. We'll see.

I'm still missing things though, because Santiago's almost in the middle of the country and I've only covered the south. What about the north? All wide open spaces and clear skies. Oh, and a whacking great desert. The Atacama, to be precise - the driest place on earth and oh so pretty about it. I want to poke it.

San Pedro de Atacama seems to be the main gateway to the desert's beauty spots, but as with accessing Punta Arenas, it's not the easiest place to get to courtesy of Chile's ridiculous stretched out-ness.

So how to get there? Again, buses are an option but again can take nearly 24 hours. I'm more included to catch a flight from Santiago to Calama, the nearest airport, and then take a bus from there. Flights only take a couple of hours and then a bus from Calama to San Pedro de Atacama is only another 90 minutes or so. That sounds much more reasonable than a whole day/night on a bus.

From San Pedro I can visit Valle de la Luna, salt lakes, the de Tatio geyser field and a whole array of other natural wonders. Now that sounds like a good plan. There's a photo of de Tatio on the front of a travel book I own and it's amazing. I want to see it first hand.

Aside from that, I'd like to spend a few days in Santiago, taking in the sights and poking around the museums. I might need to extend my 2 week plan a little - three weeks might be better.

What should I see in Chile? Do you have any suggestions of lesser known places I should seek out?