Chile | Desert Rain and Patagonian Sun

It rained in the desert. And not the Sting variety that causes roses to bloom. It was more the ‘bucket over cement’ variety. Receiving on average 5mm of rainfall a year, Atacama is not used to water - the rock hard ground does not absorb water, lack of vegetation leads to rapid erosion which, then, leads to massive mud rivers.

These were the visions that we foresaw in San Pedro de Atacama, having arrived there the previous day for what was supposed to be a 5-day trip. Water dripped in our restaurant as we pored over weather forecasts and tried to decide if we cut it short. In the end, we left the following morning, meandering between small rivers that used to be local streets, and made it in time to the airport for our long flight south to Patagonia. It was a good decision - a few days later mudflows broke through the main road, cutting off tourists and locals and forcing the government to send through food via helicopters.

One day later, we were on a small boat taking us deep into the Patagonian Fjordland on a 3-day off-trail trek towards the Bernal Glacier. Little did we know that Chile decided to compensate us for our Atacama experience with uninterrupted days of Patagonian sun. The next days would forever etch themselves in our memory. Being amongst the first to brave the Thunder Pass. Fishing in the fjord. Walking on pillows of moss. Scrambling through the shrub and almost touching the Alcina glacier. Sleeping on top of a rusty boat. Falling madly in love with Patagonia. As I sit now in our locked-down house, it’s deceptively simple to revive these memories. The wet smell of the moss, the taste of Malbec after a long day of hiking, the sharp touch of translucent glacial ice.

Puerto Natales made it a tiny bit easier for us to leave all of that behind. The archetypical frontier city, it had enough tourists to bring the vibrancy (and good coffee!) and was far enough from everything to make being there an adventure. In our few days there, we kayaked the Serrano river, hiked up to Mirador Brittanico in Torres del Paine, and run over a rabbit (sorry rabbit!). Most of all, we fell even deeper in love with the remoteness of Patagonia.