As the concept of having a hub worked out very well with Buenos Aires, I did it again with Santiago de Chile. Over four weeks, I was flying in and out. My trips from here have been to Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Valparaiso, and Patagonia. As I was always returning to the same hotel, it was easy to leave my luggage there only to take what I needed.
When entering the airport to head to Easter Island, you already feel something special will happen. Even if it’s still Chile (the only existing flight is going from Santiago de Chile), you have to pass special customs. You need an ESTA-like VISA, you need approval, and you pass an extra security just for flying to Easter Island. But it’s worth it that five days have been one of the highlights of my world trip! But let’s start with some basics.
Two hours bus ride from Santiago, you can visit the small town of Valparaíso. Some agencies are even offering day tours to Valparaíso. I decided to stay for four days in this lovely little town. Valparaíso bursts with vibrant energy, its colorful houses cascading down steep hills like a whimsical tumble of Legos. You can take a ride on the historic funiculars, soak in the bohemian vibes of Cerro Alegre, and admire the UNESCO-protected architecture, a legacy of the city’s 19th-century maritime boom.
One of the biggest attractions in Patagonia is Torres del Paine, where Torres is “Towers” in Spanish and “Paine” means blue in an old local dialect. So “Blue Towers”
The name comes from three prominent “towers”, stone pinnacles, in the middle of the massive mountain. Still, that national park has so much more: lakes, glaciers, lodges, ice, sun, animals, and, in general, a beautiful landscape.
Going to Patagonia, you have two options to enter on the Chile side: Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales. Both have an airport, and a convenient bus connection between these two exists.
I flew from Santiago to Punta Arenas, and after four days, I took a bus to Puerto Natales and left from that airport after five more days.
Due to some mess with my travel agency, I had to take a local bus from Uyuni to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. It was not only a long ride (almost 13 hours), but it was also pretty rough and dusty. Until the Chiliean border, it was a dirty road. Bumpy and Dusty. And as the bus was pretty old, all the dust found its way into the bus. We had three and a half hours of the border crossing at the Chile border, one and a half to leave Bolivia, and 2 hours to enter Chile.