Chile: 21st March - 2nd April

Right on the border with Bolivia, in the very northern-most corner of Chile, is a spectacular place called Parque Nacional Lauca. Rogers and I decided to spend a couple of days visiting it. We based ourself in a village called Putre and took a day trip up to the park. The centrepieces of the park are the twin snow-capped volcanoes of Parinacota (on the right, 6342m) and Pomerape (left, 6282m).

A view of Volcan Parinacota from across Lake Chungara, with some of the local birdlife serving as foreground.

This rabbit-like creature is called a vizcacha. They live in rocky areas of the park and reminded me a lot of the hyraxes of Africa. There were also lots of vicuñas in the park (wild version of the alpaca)...

... as well as some very cheeky llamas who were obviously used to being fed by the tourists.

This simple church in the nearby village of Parinacota dates from 1789. We are so high here, at 4392m, that the sky appears nearly black through my polarising filter.

After midday, clouds began to build up steadily and threateningly until, as we left the park to drive back to Putre, this spectacular storm broke out over the volcanoes.

Now it just so happened that the next day, no one less than the President of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, was coming to Putre as part of the celebrations associated with the creation of the new Arica-Parinacota province. The village was a hive of activity, and a free breakfast was given in the plaza for everyone, villagers and tourists alike. So here I am enjoying my free breakfast.

By 10am, the whole population of the village, and I'm sure of all the villages for miles around, had gathered in the plaza, excitedly awaiting the arrival of the President. Everywhere you looked there was the red, white and blue of the Chilean flag. Kids with balloons excited to have the day off school. Old folks waving big banners. Tense carabineros watching the crowd. Men in dark suits and sunglasses whispering into microphones attached to their jacket lapels. We half expected to see a sniper in the church tower. And then, almost unexpectedly, the President's car arrived behind the crowd, by the church. Most people didn't seem to notice. But then the small marching band struck up a tune, Ms Bachelet was presented with a garland of flowers, and accompanied by a group of local girls and what can best be described as a bunch of Morris dancers, she kind of skipped past the crowd, dancing and clapping and smiling, right past Rogers and I, down to the podium at the front of the plaza.

After the national anthem (to which nobody seemed to know the words), and some brief ceremonies involving an indigenous person and some smoking branches, the President began her speech. I have no idea what she said. I do know it ended stirringly, with the phrase "Vive Chile!" repeated several times, to enthusiastic applause. Ms Bachelet, a survivor of General Pinochet's torture chambers, may have been in all sorts of political trouble back in Santigo, but the people of the village of Putre seemed thrilled that she had deigned to visit their tiny, isolated community.

After the President had left, there was a fiesta with local dance groups and musicians.

Once all the excitement had died down, we took a bus down to the coast at Arica. From there we'd get a night bus to San Pedro de Atacama but we had a four hour wait for our connection, so we used that time to head into town and take a quick look around. This is Arica's cathedral, an iron building designed by Gustav Eiffel and brought here from Perú (when Arica was still part of that country) as an emergency measure after a tsunami swept away all the town's churches.

At the southern end of town is a large rocky headland called El Morro, from which there are great views northward over the bay towards Perú. It was the site of a decisive Chilean victory over Perú in 1880 during the War of the Pacific, and today a huge Chilean flag crowns its summit, as if to rub it in to the Peruvians across the bay.

A picture of me on El Morro at sunset.

Next morning we were in the very touristy but also very pleasant town of San Pedro de Atacama, located, as the name suggests, in the middle of the Atacama desert. Which, as everyone knows, is the driest desert in the world. The church here dates from the 18th century and has a roof made of cactus. Cool, huh? Rogers and I used San Pedro as a base for a few tours to the many attractions in the surrounding area.

First tour, that same afternoon, was to watch the sunset over the desert in the Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon), with a few stops along the way. Best bit was when Rogers and I broke away from the rest of the group, climbed up onto a rocky ridge and then had to make our way back down the drifting sands of an enormous sand dune. Great fun.

Next day we were on a whole day tour to the Salar De Atacama and some high altitude lakes. Salar is Spanish for "salt flat", and as we'd missed out on the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, we thought we'd make up for it at the Salar de Atacama. First stop, though, was the Quebrada de Jerez, an oasis in a gorge near the salar, filled with fruit trees which create their own humid microclimate in the dryness of the desert. The oasis is run on a collective basis, with each family in the nearby village having its own small share of the land.

There wasn't much to see on the salar itself, but it was still interesting. The dried salt formed a very rough, bumpy surface, not at all flat like I'd always imagined salf "flats" to be. There were lakes full of colourful algae, tiny crustaceans, and a few flamingoes feeding on them. All around, in the distance, were huge mountains.

Next stop were a couple of high altitude lakes, at over 4600m. Not much to see but amazing intense shades of blue, almost black, in the water and the sky, contrasting beautifully with the red and pale green of the desert and its sparse vegetation. Here you can also see me, exasperated by the effort of trying to explain to Rogers exactly how I wanted my photo to be taken.

The following day we were up at 3.30am for a tour to the highest geyser field in world, El Tatio, at 4500m above sea level. We arrived before dawn and it was absolutely freezing, but the cold air made the geysers even more impressive as huge clouds of steam rose all around us into the frosty air.

Me & Rogers. Rogers (along with Bryce and Sam) is the only person I know who knows more about Star Wars than I do. Although only because he's read all the geeky Star Wars novels. Bryce, Sam, Rogers and I had been quizzing each other on Star Wars since Cuenca in Ecuador, and, although I can recite every line from Episode IV, I couldn't compete with the encyclopaedic knowledge of these boys. But, in the Tatooine-like surroundings of the Atacama desert, Rogers and I ran out of questions to ask each other. So we turned to Lord Of The Rings instead. But it wasn't much fun, because Rogers doesn't know jack about Lord Of The Rings.

That afternoon, I said goodbye to Rogers, who was heading back to Perú, and got on a bus for the 23 hour journey down to Santiago. It was a tough parting, for one because Rogers had become almost like a brother to me, and also because for the first time in more than three weeks I was going to be travelling on my own again. I arrived in Santiago the following afternoon; I had just that afternoon in the city before flying to Easter Island early the next morning. I spent the time with a bit of sight-seeing in the city centre. Here's a shot to illustrate what a city of contrasts Santiago is; the 18th century cathedral reflected in the glass of a modern skyscraper.

I hadn't expected to be able to see the Andes from Santiago, but there they were, rising above the smog and cloud.

So, next morning, a four hour flight out into the Pacific brought to one of the most remote inhabited places on Earth; Rapa Nui, or Easter Island. The island is of course world famous for the 800+ giant stone carvings that lie scattered around its coast, known as Moai, some up to 10m in height and weighing up to 75 tonnes. I stayed in a beautiful guest house on the outskirts of the island's only town, Hanga Roa. Just a five minute walk from the centre of the town, I found my first few moai.

The moai originally stood on large platforms, built from stone, called ahus. Today most of the moai have long since been toppled and lie smashed to pieces and eroded by the elements. But some, like these just outside Hanga Roa next to the ones in the previous photo, have been raised up again onto their ahus, their red volcanic topknots replaced, and some have even had their coral eyes restored, like the one in the background.

South of Hanga Roa, there rises a low, broad hill. They told me it was a volcano. I didn't believe them, it didn't look like any volcano I'd ever seen before. Until I got to the top and stared across this vast crater, a mile in diameter and 200 metres deep. Easter Island was formed by three main volcanoes, one in each corner, accounting for its triangular shape.

On my second day on the island I went diving; very clear water and some nice rock formations but not much fish life and nothing worth showing here. The following day I rented a car and drove around the island, visiting many ahus, most derelict and with their statues eroded almost beyond recognition. At Rano Raraku, another ancient volcano, is the quarry where the moai were carved, in situ, before being transported across the island to their respective ahus. There are several hundred moai still in the quarry, some finished but never transported, others lying half finished but abandoned, and some little more than shapes in the bedrock, rough hints of what they were to become.

Me doing my best moai impression.

A few kilometres from Rana Raraku is the largest ahu of all, Ahu Tongariki, with fifteen moai. This ahu was restored in the 1990s, because, like all the ahu on Easter Island, it had been damaged and its moai toppled. The history of Easter Island is absolutely fascinating, and in many ways a parable for the modern world. Once a moai had been carved, it needed to be transported to its ahu, which could be as much as 20km from the quarry. How this was done is only really speculation, but it definitely involved the use of lots of wood, either as rollers or as sleds, which led to deforestation of the originally relatively densely wooded island. Over time, the chiefs of the various tribes on the island tried to outdo each other in the size and number of their moai, leading to more and more deforestation. This in turn led to a shortage of wood to maintain the fleet of fishing craft on which the islanders depended for food. Intertribal tensions over the few remaining resources resulted in fighting, the toppling of oneanother's moai, and possibly even cannabilism (not proven, but the fact that a traditional curse amongst the islanders is, "the flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth", is a clue!).

The following day I returned to Rana Raraku before dawn to watch the sunrise over the Pacific. I have to admit, it was more than a little spooky walking amongst these giant faces in the darkness, their vast shapes looming up on either side of me in the starlight.

I was kinda glad when the sun rose. Easter Island was expensive to get to, but absolutely worth it. Definitely one of the most interesting and amazing places I've ever been. I returned that afternoon to Santiago, where I had two further nights before flying down to Ushuaia in Tierra Del Fuego. I spent these nights with my Chilean friend Pablo, who I'd met in Belize, his girlfriend Javiera and his amazingly friendly neighbours.

Next page: Tierra Del Fuego & Torres Del Paine
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