The narrowest country worldwide packs a strike when it concerns natural attractions. From north to southern, Chile’s diverse terrain consists of lunar landscapes, rolling hills, volcanoes and snow-capped hills. Below is the guide to Chile’s many spectacular natural destinations from Insight Guides, a leading travel expert with over 45 years of experience!
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Moonscapes in the Atacama Desert
Northern Chile’s incredible Atacama Desert harbours phenomenal otherworldly landscapes at more than 2,500 metres over sea level. The community of San Pedro de Atacama sits on a high Andean plateau surrounded by terrain encompassing extensive salt flats, hot springs, as well as intensely blue lagoons that support an abundance of bird life.
At the nearby Los Flamencos National Reserve, you can take in peaceful shallows dotted with plenty of pink flamingos, while Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) is a natural marvel of exceptional rock developments where you can climb vast sand dunes to watch the sunset as rainbow colours wash over the landscape against a background of distant hill heights.
While Atacama is taken into consideration to be the driest desert worldwide, rain does occasionally fall during the winter months (June– Aug), triggering this normally arid landscape to flower with pretty pink perennials, creating an unforeseen flowering desert carpeting that only a fortunate few get to see every few years.
Realize when travelling around Chile that earthquakes can happen, as a result of the country’s Andean area and also geological structure. Earthquake track information brand-new quakes worldwide as they take place.
Torres del Paine
A Unesco biosphere book since 1978, Patagonia’s Torres del Paine National forest is dominated by the 3 huge granite peaks of the Torres del Paine (Towers of Paine) that rise over it. Encompassing several of one of the most mind-blowing instances of Nature’s charm in Chile, otherwise every one of South America, the park’s looming hills are matched by turquoise lakes, extensive meadows and substantial ice fields. 4- to ten-day trekking circuits with valleys as well as forests take in tops, plains as well as icy rivers, with tough climbs rewarded by spectacular sights over the parks many lakes.
For those with less time, much shorter hikes to see the windswept coasts of Lago Grey, or watercraft journeys to obtain close up to the large, sky-blue, icy mass of Glacier Grey, can be just as amazing. Lodging options are offered within the park itself or in the village of Puerto Natales, around a two-hour repel.
The enigmas of Easter Island
While lots of site visitors to Rapa Nui, additionally known as Isla de Pascua (Easter Island), usually make a beeline to the Ahu Tongariki team of massive moai sculptures to witness for themselves the enigmas of this most remote place in the South Pacific Sea, the island is a spectacular natural tourist attraction by itself.
Almost half of this Unesco World Heritage Website’s land mass, located a five-and-a-half hr trip away from Santiago, is secured as Rapa Nui National Forest. Three extinct volcanoes consist of the majority of the island including Rano Kao, which has a magnificent freshwater lake within its crater. There are many volcanic caverns and also lava tubes to explore, along with the Rano Raraku crater, that for hundreds of years was the quarry from which the Rapa Nui individuals took the stone that was utilized to carve out their spiritual monolithic sculptures, a few of which still lie half-buried in the ground today.
The Chiloé Island chain
The picturesque 17th-century wood churches of Chiloé– 16 of which are Unesco World Heritage Sites– and colourful residences supported on stilts above the water, called palafitos, tell the human building story of Chiloé Island. Yet enthusiasts of the open airs will additionally be bewitched by the location’s all-natural style. The archipelago’s area in Los Lagos (The Lakes) area of Chile makes up a wide range of stunning all-natural elegance, from beautiful fjörds and sea channels, to lush rain forests within Chiloé and also Tantauco National Parks, that can be discovered on trekking tracks leading to beaches where you can detect wildlife consisting of sea lions, penguins as well as aquatic otters at play in the cold waters.
Valle Nevado
A 90-minute drive from the capital Santiago, Valle Nevado is Chile’s leading resort for winter season skiing and also snowboarding many thanks to its top notch powder snow– as well as what better excitement than overcoming among the world’s greatest range of mountains, the Andes? Located in the darkness of the marvelous 6,000-metre-high Nevado del Plomo hill and also extending across the its foothills, the hotel’s ski period ranges from late June up until late September. Newbies can take courses at Valle Nevado ski and also snowboard school, while accomplished skiers and adrenaline junkies and also can choose a heli-skiing trip, landing on alpine reaches to take on immaculate inclines with vertical declines of up to 2,000 metres on any type of offered run.
