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8 JULY 2016

FEATURES

The Cordillera de la Sal in the Atacama Desert, photographed by Paolo Reyes.

114THE FINAL FRONTIER

Chile is Earth’s end, the distant edge of a mysterious continent, pinned by the Andes mountains on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other. Rogue journeys from the desert wasteland of Atacama in the north to the frost-glazed outpost of Patagonia in the south.

Chile is Earth’s end, the distant edge of a mysterious continent, pinned by the

Andes mountains on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other. From the

desert wasteland of Atacama in the north to the frost-glazed outpost of Patagonia

in the south, Severino X.B. Soriano explores the planet’s last wild place

THE FINAL FRONTIER

P H O T O G R A P H S B Y P A O L O R . R E Y E S

FIRE AND ICE

The Perito Moreno glacier wall in Lago Argentino,

Patagonia. Opposite: The Amphitheater of Valle de

la Luna (Moon Valley), Atacama Desert.

IN THE FOOTHILLS of the mighty Andes, far from the cosmopolitan swirl of Santiago, Chile’s capital, is the driest place on planet Earth: the Atacama Desert, a barren but beautiful landscape that belongs to another universe.

With a terrain remarkably similar to the Red Planet, NASA has been using the Atacama plateau as a test site since 2003 for various Mars-bound spacecraft, including the Viking rovers.

Almost 8,000-feet above sea level, the dusty town of San Pedro de Atacama, with its picturesque adobe streets clustered around a tree-lined plaza, is the gateway to this immense desert, which stretches for 600 miles from northern Chile into southern Peru.

This parched paradise, under the long shadow of the Licancabur volcano, is like a siren call for anyone who wants to be enthralled by the natural world: flamingo-studded salt flats, quasi-lunar landscapes of salt mountains and sand dunes, the world’s highest geyser fields, pre-Inca ruins, ancient petroglyphs, and natural hot springs.

It is not a place where one would expect to find a pocket of luxury. But carved into the red ridges of the Catarpe Valley, on a bend of the San Pedro river, is the Alto Atacama Desert Lodge & Spa (Camino Pukará s/n, Suchor,

Ayllú de Quitor, San Pedro de Atacama, Chile; +56 2 2912 3945; altoatacama.com), a refined oasis in this ruddy wilderness.

Set against a backdrop of dramatic ochre cliffs, the lodge has over 30 quietly elegant rooms, six outdoor pools, a gourmet restaurant, an Andean garden, a fully equipped spa, and a fireside bar and outdoor lounge where the day’s discoveries can be dissected over a nightcap of Pisco Sour, the classic South American cocktail.

Alto Atacama offers guided excursions into the desert, where a series of geological showstoppers await: Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley), where otherworldly pillars of salt and clay—some 20-feet tall, like the million-year-old Tres Marias—create a pale, extraterrestrial panorama; and Valle de la Muerte (Death Valley), an unforgiving scar of cracked earth, where you’ll be rewarded with brilliant views, particularly at dusk, when the sunset paints the plateau a furious shade of red.

In the Valle del Arcoiris (Rainbow Valley), minerals in various shades of green and pink have turned the canyon walls into towering, multi-hued cathedrals. Nearby is the archeological site of Yerbas Buenas, where prehistoric petroglyphs (rock carvings) of foxes, pumas, snakes, and

OUT THE WINDOW

The Singular Patagonia hotel in Puerto Bories, Chilean Patagonia. Opposite: The multi-hued canyons of Valle del Arcoiris

(Rainbow Valley), Atacama Desert.

spectral human figures were etched 10,000 years ago on the high walls of a jagged ravine.

From Alto Atacama, it’s only a 10-mile drive to the Salar de Atacama, Chile’s largest salt flat, not far from the border of Bolivia. As we neared the flats, we saw flocks of Andean flamingos forage in the pools of salty water, blazing bright pink against the creamy white landscape, as they feasted on brine and shrimp in the shallow lagoons.

A longer, 55-mile drive took us to the El Tatio geysers, arguably the most popular high-altitude excursion in Atacama. We arrived at the crack of dawn, when the rising sunlight slanted across the field to reveal a fountain of 80 steaming fumaroles, some surging 20-feet into the sky, as columns of white mist condensed in the frigid morning air.

On a rocky promontory overlooking the Rio San Pedro, a 15-minute walk from the lodge, is the Pukara de Quitor, a stone fortress built by indigenous Atacameños around 900 B.C. to protect themselves from marauding Incas. In the 16th century, it served as the last bastion of the native tribes against the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Valdivia.

From the windy summit of Pukara, where the ancient ruins of mud-brick ramparts hug the slopes like cliff dwellings, there was no longer any trace of that terror. There was only a ragged cobalt sky, the red bone-dry earth, and the incredible bulk of the Andes Mountains, lording over the desert like a distant and silent deity.

Patagonia, in the southern tip of South America, just a snowball’s throw from Antarctica, has always been a land of legend.

The name alone conjures images of a mythical landscape—spiky peaks veiled in clouds, glaciers that extend to the horizon tumbling into electric-blue lakes, endless steppes unpopulated for hundreds of miles save for a lone gaucho on horseback, herding sheep with a dog by his side.

This vast and sparsely populated swathe of South America has long lured the wanderer, the exile, the outlaw, the restless spirit. Charles Darwin traveled through here with the HMS Beagle in the 1830s. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid also sought refuge in its plains and pampas; the bandits even purchased a 15,000-acre estate, where they lived for years until

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In the foothills of the mighty Andes, far from the cosmopolitan swirl of Santiago, is the driest place on

planet Earth: the Atacama Desert, a barren but beautiful landscape that belongs to another universe.

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Where the enormity of space never felt so large, as are the silences that fill them, we reveled in the solitude we had sought. For a stolen moment in this frontier suspended

in time, Patagonia still felt like our own discovery.

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THE BIG CHILL

A turquoise pool inside the Perito Moreno glacier. Opposite: Prehistoric rock

carvings in the archeological site of Yerbas Buenas,

Atacama Desert.

the law caught up on them. Patagonia is an immense glacial wilderness that straddles both Chile

and Argentina, with the Andes serving as a natural border between the two countries. In Chile, the landscape is a mass of fjords, peaks, and glaciers, which converge most powerfully in Parque Nacional Torres del Paine. The Argentinian side is made up of rolling pampas, dotted with estancias, which rise most dramatically around the cordillera of Los Glaciares National Park.

Our weeklong trip, an overland jeep safari arranged by Quasarex (quasarex.com/patagonia), began at The Singular Patagonia (Km. 5, 5 Norte S/N, Natales, Región de Magallanes y de la Antártica Chilena, Chile; +56 61 272 2030), which occupies a former meatpacking plant on the shoals of Puerto Bories. Floor-to-ceiling windows afford a gripping view of the Andean peaks and the glaciers across the Fjord of Last Hope.

On our first morning, we embarked on a friendly, four-hour hike to the high bluff of Cerro Benitez hill. The walk featured close encounters with circling Andean condors, stunning views of Lago Sofia to the northwest, and stops at a series of deep caves that once gave shelter to the ancient

Aoniken tribes of Patagonia.From there, we explored the largest cave in the area, the 14,000-year-old

Cueva del Milodon, once home to the prehistoric mylodon, an extinct giant sloth that once roamed this cold, inhospitable corner of the world along with the saber-toothed tiger.

For three days, we ventured into the Argentinian side of Patagonia, with its high mountains, luminous lakes, and mammoth ice fields. Hostería Alta Vista (Ruta Provincial 15, Km. 35, El Calafate, Santa Cruz, Patagonia, Argentina; +54 2902 491247; hosteriaaltavista.com.ar), a Thirties-style homestead with a cozy Provençal touch, set on Estancia Anita—one of the largest and oldest estancias in Argentina—served as our base.

Around Alta Vista, there is almost no human habitation, just the wild Patagonian steppe: monochromatic hills, blanketed in tall tufts of coirón grass, rolling all the way to red-rock mesas in the distance and the shore of the limpid blue Lago Argentina, the country’s largest lake. You could easily pass a fine day here just watching the changing light transform this serene landscape, while horses graze in the valley, hares scamper before

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From the windy summit of Pukara de Quitor, there was only a ragged cobalt sky, the red bone-dry earth, and the incredible bulk of the Andes mountains, lording

over the desert like a distant and silent deity.

SPRING BREAK

A hot spring in the El Tatio geyser field, Andes Mountains. Opposite: An iceberg in Lago Gray, Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, Chile.

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TO ARRANGE A CUSTOMIZED HOLIDAY IN ATACAMA AND PATAGONIA, VISIT LATIN AMERICA TRAVEL SPECIALISTS A2A JOURNEYS

(WWW.A2AJOURNEYS.COM; 952-7414) AT 10-B, LAPANDAY CENTER, 2263 PASONG TAMO EXT., MAKATI CITY.

you, and caranchas circle overhead.In the afternoons, we enjoyed long, lazy horseback rides through the

Anita Valley and the broad hill behind the hostería, with one of the owner’s sheep dogs, a border collie named Trauque, tagging along. Frederico, the hostería’s resident gaucho, led us through parched open plains until we found a shady spot with unbroken views of Perito Moreno glacier, the highlight of any visit to Argentinian Patagonia. An ice field the size of Israel, travelers from far and wide are drawn to the beguiling beauty of its ice.

From a jetty at Lago Argentino, we boarded a ferry that took us to the 180-foot-high glacier wall and rocky moraine of Perito Moreno. Twenty minutes later, the glacier loomed above us, a craggy wonder glowing with colors: aquamarine, pale gray, pure white, and an otherworldly fluorescent blue. But it was the sound that was the most dramatic, hearing the frozen beast shred itself into pieces. By turns, the ice creaked and groaned, snapped and roared like the blaze of dry firewood.

On our return to Chile for the final leg of the trip, we ensconced ourselves at Tierra Patagonia (Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, Patagonia,

Chile; +56 222078861; tierrahotels.com). Set on the azure shores of Lago Sarmiento, the 40-room hotel is a long, wood-clad sweep of a building that blends into the landscape, hugging the earth like a stalking puma.

The 450,000-acre Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, a wild portion of Chilean Patagonia that’s lavished with towering glaciers, snow-clad valleys and dramatic peaks, is the area’s star attraction. The centerpiece of the park is a crop of tooth-like peaks known as the Cordillera del Paine, 9,000-foot granite towers that stand side by side, often wrapped in impenetrable misty robes. The Paine massif is possibly the most singular and breathtaking sight in all of Patagonia.

On our final day, with our guide Alvaro, we hiked up to the Mirador del Condor, through silent valleys of grazing guanacos, to a startling lookout towards the three towers, where the sudden thunderclap of a distant avalanche was the only disturbance of the peace.

From there, where the enormity of space never felt so large, as are the silences that fill them, we reveled in the solitude we had sought—and at last found. For a stolen moment in this frontier suspended in time, Patagonia still felt like our own discovery.

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