Chile with Jacada Travel
Following Jen’s recent research trip to Chile, Jacada Travel’s Latin America experts Jen and Ciara tell us what it is they love about this diverse and striking country.
Chile with Jacada Travel
Ciara: I think that just the extremes, the extremes of that country. I mean, you go to the Atacama, it’s hot, it’s arid, you know the colours are all sort of like pinks and yellows and oranges, and then you go down to Patagonia and it’s four seasons in one day. It could be raining, it could be that the wind is tremendous. You just feel like you’re on another planet. For that reason, it’s definitely one of my favourite places.
Jen: It kind of really surprised me because you have got such diversity. It’s a really long skinny country. Obviously you’ve got the desert and then you’ve got the central valley and then you’ve got the Patagonia area.
Diversity
Jen: It’s quite interesting because Patagonia is almost like its own country, so that kind of mixes in with Argentina, that’s really unusual. But then you’ve also got history which I wasn’t expecting, so much history there.
Up in the Atacama, that used to be under the ocean. So, you’ve got trees that have turned into stone. You’ve got a bit of history, you’ve got great diversity and you’ve got really warm people.
It kind of reminds me of some places at home, like it kind of reminds me of Wales, but to like a magnitude level. There’s also that like nice feeling of – it’s just something quite small – but when you go out and you’ve been walking all day and it’s like a wintery day, you’re really cold, and then you can come back in, and you feel really protected again in this really cosy lodge, and the wind is whipping around, but I’m actually just sat there having a nice hot bath with a bottle of wine.
Ciara: You haven’t really got beach in Chile, but you’ve got the wine region if you just want to chill out, relax, enjoy good food, good wine, get pampered. Great way to start the trip, or finish the trip.
Stand-out memories
Jen: We were watching the eclipse happen very slowly, and I was lying down on a bed outside, just looking up and seeing the stars and once the moon was blocked out, I actually just turned around, because everyone was watching the moon but I just turned around – and there were so many stars, like, you just can’t imagine, and I could actually see the Milky Way really really clearly, it’s like, that’s definitely the Milky Way. So yeah, that’s something I will never ever forget.
Find out more about Chile with some of our example trips.
