Having been a geography student in college, it was captivating to see the Chilean landscapes. There were moments when I was struck by these vistas, places of geographical importance and even the cosmos - things I knew I would witness in Chile but that awareness did nothing to prepare me a bit for when the actual marvels presented themselves.
I am trying to list down some of the natural landscapes of structures of geographical and historical importance, and I am sure to have missed some.
The Arica Elbow
If you've seen the western coastal outline of South America, it is a straight line starting from the south, following the longitude and then takes a sudden towards the West, before continuing further up. That point of inflexion, where the continent coastline bends itself is called the Arica Elbow/Arica Bend, name after the city of Arica in Chile, at the Peruvian border.
While in Arica, I climbed the a small hill called the Morro, a vantage point of sorts, and I could see the far horizon on one side. And lo and behold, the Arica bend!
The Atacama Desert
The driest place on earth - the Atacama desert dominates the topography of northern Chile, and some parts of Bolivia and Peru as well. Traveling from the north into the Atacama desert, and then travelling the length of it, through cities like Calama, Antofagasta and Copiapo, I saw the desert in all it's glory. Vast stretches of flat dry land, or massive sand dunes, or sporadic salt flats, huge gorges with misfit streams - it does give you the impression of being on another planet, with its inhospitability. No wonder the conspiracy theorists claim the moon landings were shot in the Atacama.
Geysers
Well, they don't splash water in the air like the Old Faithful but they are actual geysers - bubbling at the surface and spewing up steam in the air in this part of the Atacama desert. The phenomenon of a geyser requires several geological conditions to go right, and so they do in this small geyser field near the Bolivian border.
It's Always Sunny in Elqui Valley
The Elqui Valley had great night skies. The clearest view of the arch of Milky way I have ever seen! Right up in the sky for everyone to see, the lump of stars was crystal clear. Standing in an areas with relatively low lights around, thanks to the no moon on the das I was in the valley, the eyes barely needed any accommodation of pupil to witness the grand cosmos.
No wonder the valley is house of to several big observatories, for the valley has one of the clearest skies in the world all year round.
The Volcanos - Earth Zits
Teeming with tectonic and volcanic activity, the country has the largest number of volcanos after Indonesia. Volcanos are scattered all across the country, from the Atacama desert in the north all the way down to South Patagonia.
Volcan Villarica
The first grand volcano I saw in the country - and it was curdling with magma and spouting its smoke when I first saw it out the bus window. With the perfect of curves (read slopes), and covered in snow all the way to the bottom, Volcan Villarica is one of the most active volcanoes in all of Latin America. The volatile volcano had its last eruption in 2015 with yellow alerts as recently as last year. The volcano dominates the panorama, the skyline and the silhoutte of the Pucon, Villarica and all the places in the 20-30 km radius.
Volcan Osorno
Quieter and with much bigger slopes, Volcan Osorno is the elder, calmer sibling of Volcan Villarica in this family of great grand volcanos. Visible in the backdrop of Lake Llanquihue, the volcano allows nothing other than itself to stand out when viewed from towns across the lake like Osorno and Frutillar.
Strait of Magallen
The city of Punta Arenas lies along the Strait of Magallen, discovered in the famous voyage to successfully circumnavigate the planet by the explorer Ferdinand Magallen. The strait is aa confluence of the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans, and provides a passage between the two.
Punta Arenas, a beautiful city in itself, provides the most imposing vistas of the strait - several shipwrecked vessels on the stony beaches(some more than a 100 years old), heavy winds (30-40km/hr on an average day), and a sight of the island of Tierra del Fuego on the horizon.
To stand on the well built promenade of the city, one can imagine visuals of Ferdinand Magallen and the several explorers and merchants coming through the very waters, trying to cross over from one ocean to the other, some succeeding and the others not, adding the collection of ships run aground.
Fjords
I found fjords to be the most beautiful of landscapes. Rugged mountains carved by glaciers into wide valleys only to be occupied by sea water. As a landscape, nothing is more glaring an evidence of the the remains of the Pleistocene ice age as a fjord. And the Chilean Patagonia, located beyond the 40 degree S latitude is punctuated with fjords throughout it's chaotic coastline along with the last remnants of glaciers from the ice age.
The Patagonian Glaciers
The glacial beauty of Patagonia crescendos in the Beagle Channel, the last stretch of water before the tip of the continent. On either side, but more on the northern side, of the channel, are massive glaciers, differing in character and colors and texture but not in grandeur. The channel features a whole alley of glaciers, in a small stretch of about 70 kms. The glaciers remain behind, resolute, thousands of years after the ice age has been long gone.
Is this the real life, is this just fantasy
Puerto Williams : Nothing More Beyond
The last town with civilian settlements in the southern Hemisphere, Puerto Williams is a quaint little town on the beagle channel, lying almost right across on the Beagle channel to the much bigger city of Ushuaia in Argentina. Extremely cold (at least throughout when I was in the town) and remote (one weekly ferry and a small twin otter plane 5 times a week), the town stands as the last bastion mother nature has allowed humans to colonise.
The Andes and the Aconcagua
By the end of the 5 weeks of the trip, I was exhausted. I had seen so much - landscapes - that my head needed time for it to percolate down before it could take more.
But Chile was prepared to for one last dance, a goodbye gesture, a parting gift. As we flew from Santiago for my flight back, within a few minutes, we took the turn towards the Andes and there we were, flying right over top of the mountain range. Peaks covered with snow as far as the eyes could see, I could never imagine having such a clear view in the daylight of one of the most magnificent mountain ranges on the planet. And there it was, jutting out above with it's pointy summits, standing a notch above the rest of its field - Mount Aconcagua - the highest peak outside the Himalayas.
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