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Chris Senior | profile | all galleries >> Galleries >> Atacama Desert & Patagonia, Chile tree view | thumbnails | slideshow

Atacama Desert & Patagonia, Chile

I decided to go on a package holiday! Well, more like small-group adventure holiday, rather than an actual package tour, and a change of continent too: Chile, all the way across the equator and down to South America. Why the change? Well, I'd been toying with a visit to Patagonia for a while, and having next to no knowledge of Spanish (or indeed, embarrassingly, any other language ... part of being British, I guess), it seemed a good idea to have someone else organise the trip for me. Also, I'd spent the preceding six or so months shut in my small office plotting woodland from aerial photos. Not just woods, but any tree with a canopy greater that three metres diameter. This isolation made the thought of spending my holiday with other people quite tempting. A tour of the Web, starting with Responsible Travel, yielded the perfect trip for me from a UK company called Pura Aventura: All flights, lodgings, activities, travel details sorted, and best of all ... lots of walking.

After almost two days of travelling, including the insanely long, long-haul over the Atlantic, I arrived in the north of Chile for several days in the Atacama Desert, reputedly the driest place on earth, and (after all my work), blissfully free from any trees! Staying in a beautiful oasis of adobe buildings that was San Pedro, I had chance to climb a volcano to over 5,600 metres; travel the high-altitude plains of the area; walk slot canyons past old homes and huge cacti; see wildlife close-by (and depicted in ancient rock carvings); visit geysers at dawn ... and all under a deep, intense azure sky which gives New Mexico a run for it's money, a present from the high altitude of this area. After flying around 3,000 Km south, I arrived at almost the other end of Chile (and pretty much the end of the earth, too) ... Patagonia was mine to explore at last! Once in Torres del Paine National Park, the fun began: A horse ride; chance to walk on a glacier and see icebergs up-close; plenty of walking, including the famous 'W'-circuit across the Park itself, with a constant backdrop of stunningly beautiful mountains and hanging glaciers; warm, friendly refugios to spend the evenings in, full of good company ... perfect.

The highlight, apart from days of having nothing to do but hike and take photos, was a trip up to the base of Las Torres themselves, surely one of the best views in the world ... and relief that the cloud held off so as not to obscure the view. The low point ... leaving the Park the next morning, with a sky turned a deep, rich blue and a fresh covering of snow on some of the distant peaks. Just one more trek across the Park first ... please!

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