Chile

Chile Holiday

Chile is a perpetual surprise and a country of vast contrasts, with landscapes that contrive to look impossibly reminiscent of rural England or Highland Scotland.

Bound by the Andes in the East and the Pacific to the West, Chile has maintained a unique identity in South America. From the ice flows in the Antarctic South to the arid northern desert, Chile passes through a spectrum of unparalleled geographical and cultural diversity.

All Chile clings to its narrow strip of land crammed between the Andes and the ocean, but no region more determinedly than the northernmost ports, backed by the relentlessly fearsome desert. It can be cruelly hot inland, but the Pacific air-conditions the coastal zone to perfection.

Antofagasta, the metropolis of the north, shows why Chile is called "mineral-rich". Through this port pass the nation's exports of copper, sulphur, borax together with other bounty from the desert. Farther north, Iquique was founded in the 16th century. It has preserved some of the mansions of the 19th-century "nitrate barons" who staked everything on minerals-and won.

Arica, Chile's northernmost city, is the gateway to exciting Andean excursions. Lauca National Park is so high it's literally breathtaking, amidst ten snow-capped mountains peaking above 6,000 m (nearly 20,000 ft).