Santiago is like San Francisco in that there are many close getaway locations for weekend adventures. There are also microclimates abound — in a couple hours you can be in snow or in beaches.

This past weekend J. and I hiked Cerro Pecho. We found this blog post and followed it all the way. Beautiful views, and noticeably cleaner air. Only hassle were the dogs. Unlike Atacama, there wasn't rape happening all around us, but they were loud with their barking…

[Wrote this offline and forgot to post it back in April]

There are three main tours to do in Atacama. Two of them leave very early in the morning to catch the sunrise, the other leaves in the afternoon. As a tour salesman began explaining the morning tours, we interrupted him: it's ok, we're not interested in waking up at 4 or 6 AM, regardless of what the tour actually involves. First, one sleeps. Then, one lives.

We signed up for the afternoon tour of Luna de Vieja. It was a delightful experience. Van picked us up, guide explained what we were going to do, we got out, and started walking across the desert landscape.

There were big drop points, Grand Canyon style, as well as white salt plains that inspire the name "moon."

We walked down a huge sand dune. We crawled through a cave. We trekked (gently) through canyons that resembled Bryce or Zion in Utah. The guide explained the different rock formations. I made small talk with a Canadian woman and a Mexican woman. We chatted with two Germans who denied that there was such a thing as a "German breakfast." As an American, I felt empowered to promptly correct them about their own culture. (Joke, joke.)

At the end, we drove to an area where we could rock-climb to the top of a canyon and watch the sun set. Quite a beautiful sight — desert for as long as the eye can see, with the sun setting behind a canyon in the distance. Our guide, who appeared to be dating one of the participants on the trip, turned on a Queen song and blasted it out of his iPod. Bizarre and at first unwelcome, I soon warmed to it as the soundtrack of the sunset moment, in the middle of a vast expanse in the remote part of northern Chile.

To get to Atacama, the driest desert in the world and a top tourist attraction in Chile, you fly to Calama which is a 2.5 hour flight north of Santiago.

Lonely Planet, which tends to be charitable to just about every nook and cranny in the world, begins its section on Calama: “This place is a shithole.” Don’t hang around, it says. Go straight to San Pedro, the small tourist town near the desert, where adobe covered hotels and restaurants line the sandy streets.

Except Lonely Planet didn’t actually give any info for how to get to San Pedro from Calama. So Steve and I took a taxi from the airport to the bus station — looking out the window of the taxi, the shithole description seemed right, though maybe “poor” would have been the better catch-all. At the bus station, we asked a guy if the bus was going to San Pedro. He said yes and urged us to board right away and pay on the bus. Later we found out why: we paid him directly and didn’t go through the official ticketing station, so he pocketed the money (after first trying to get us to pay him more than the original quote). It didn’t feel great to unknowingly partake in a mini-corruption action, but as Steve said, “We didn’t know what was going on.” (Oh, the rationalizations. To be fair, on many buses in Chile, you do pay once on-board….)

Almost immediately we were on a road with complete nothingness in every direction. Middle of nowhere. Desert. Redness. Dryness. If the bus had broken down, we would have been fucked, especially since I neglected to pack Cliff Bars or nuts which is downright shameful I know. Fortunately, the bus held out OK, and we made it to New Mexico-like San Pedro.

Cute town. A couple thousand inhabitants, some true locals, most tourist-industry implants, and then the tourists themselves who seem to come from all over. About four or five main streets.

As nighttime fell, the stars were coming out and the Hotel Kimal was giving off a good vibe.

We each sat down with our laptops, and OD’d on our respective RSS readers.

We rented a car in Puerto Montt, a medium-size city at the southern end of the lakes district, and drove north. It's about a 15 hour drive to Santiago and we did it over 2.5 days.

The Lake District is in the central valley of the country and it's where many Chileans go to do outdoor sports and trekking.

We stayed on the Pan-American Highway and didn't veer off the road much to look at the lakes. The sights from the highway were similar to those in California, except for the big old volcano forever in the horizon.

We stopped in Valdivia which is increasingly becoming a tourist town especially for those coming from southern Argentina. Still lovely with the lake and German influence.

We spent the night in little Osorno, which is not known for much, but it actually has some charm. We took the free city tour – 3 hours! – of this little town. It was great fun, if one hour too long. The tour stopped at very mundane places ("here is a gym in the city") and reviewed when certain stores opened and closed. One long-time resident joined the tour and tried to challenge the young tour guide's knowledge of the city. She stayed in the back and talked to us about the different sights. Some listened to the main tour guide, others to the renegade.

One observation: driving a car taught us that many streets in Chile are one-way! It's hard to drive around a city even if you know how to walk it. I'd say 50-75% of the streets are one-way. Some streets even turn into one-ways at different hours of the day…which makes Google Maps less useful. Wonder why this is…

It's the end of the world, and it has a grip on many people's imagination: Patagonia.

My Mom and I traveled there for four nights. We flew from Santiago to Punta Arenas (4 hrs). Punta Arenas is two hours by plane north of Antarctica. From there we took a five hour shuttle to our hotel in Torres del Piene national park.

Torres del Paine is a park that contains glaciers, mountains, lakes, waterfalls, island formations, giant rocks. There are dozens of possible excursions within the park: hikes through treacherous terrain en route to a massive glacier; a gentle horseback ride through green grass fields; a stroll around a still lake and through fields of lupines (flowers).

The sights are stunning, of course.

On our first full day we hiked to the French Valley. It was in total an 8.5 hour hike, at times through fierce wind and pelting rain. We ate lunch on some rocks and watched an avalanche on the glacier in front of us. I didn't have waterproof hiking boots so my feet got soaked and that was a downer. But we felt adventurous, and now we can tell people that we hiked through fierce wind and pelting rain en route to a glacier, so all is well.

On our second day we ate Chilean barbecue (delicious) near Laguna Azul, and then walked around the lake. It was a gentle day as we were still recovering from yesterday's long journey.

On our third day we explored a different part of the park. It looked very much like Yosemite at times, and at other times like the Marin Headlands. We ascended a tall mountain and enjoyed views of all of the park. So beautiful. It was a five hour hike in total.

Bottom line on Patagonia: It's very beautiful. The diversity of sights you can see is impressive. Downsides: You pay a premium for the "brand" of Patagonia and the sights are not unlike those you can see in the Southwest U.S. The glaciers are massive and some of the views one-of-a-kind, but the overall feeling didn't seem totally different from other places. Nevertheless, I highly recommend Chilean Patagonia if you are in South America.