Chile...A Hyped-up Love Affair

What began with a desert, the highest and driest in the world, ended with 3 glaciers, the coldest and boldest in the world. Everything in between seems inconsequential compared to the North and South, a superlative sandwich, if you will, with a mediocre center. I lived six weeks up and down the thin coastal country and nearly every day saw some wonder of natural beauty that made my jaw drop and my heart skip a beat, but in the end…I was left wanting for Chile is a country that, it seems, developed so quickly it forgot to preserve its identity.

San Pedro de Atacamas.
Moments of desert beauty, geyser magnificence and crystal star gazing but my first memory is what seems to stand out the most;  getting off our night bus at about 8 am and deciding that running was the best thing to shake the 20 hour bus ride out of our legs. Just three weeks outside our half marathon debut, it seemed more important than ever. I was shocked when five minutes in I wanted to cry from exhaustion. Altitude+heat equal horror. It was like meeting someone, having built up years of anticipation, and getting slapped in the face.

Maybe it was the culture shock that shook me most because Chile in its haste to set the pace for the development of its continent has become a country that has become as consumeristic as the states. After leaving the beautiful cocoon of Incan ideals; this was more than I could bear. There were no women in flowing skirts offering fresh fruit from their road side stands, but instead supermarkets, with snide cashiers and sliding doors. The artisan markets of handcrafted jewelry were replaced by megamalls, and the type of happiness that is only present in those who have very little was replaced by the dissatisfaction by those that have 12 cars and thirst for 13.

Chile’s uncharacteristic middle, Santiago, was no acceptation to the precedent set in the North. La Moneda (presidential house) was beautiful and its streets were clean but beyond that there was no defining characteristic. From the chain restaurants to the Nuts4Nuts peanut stands on the street corner, the city looked and dressed like that of New York. Most moments I forgot I was in South America at all. The only thing that saved this city in my eyes was our half marathon. The energy of 25,000 people lifted me up in a way that only running can do…but even that race dominated by extranjeros (foreigners) was not Chilean…it was Brazilian, it was Spanish, it was German, and French…with just a dab of indiscernible Chile throughout.

Patagonia, thankfully, was a bit of a different beast. Here people took pride in their natural gifts; their glaciers, their meadows, their valleys, the waterways that Magellan himself had sailed through. But their pride was not one which screamed, “We are Chilean”, instead it rang, “We are Patagonian”. Torres del Pain welcomed us with open arms, begging us to walk its mountain paths, to glimpse the hidden French Valley and climb the last summit to the three looming Torres, 12 million years old and made of pure magma pushed up over time through Magellan’s basin. But it was not Chile I was frolicking through in a bright blue marshmallow jacket, it was Patagonia, and the difference was unmistakable.

Perhaps it should be expected that a country with such a unique geographical structure lacks a unifying identify. Like a long scrawny finger it scales up the length of South American, broken into 15 separate regions. Most Northern Chileans don’t know the Southern stretches of Patagonia and don’t care to, and most Patagonians have never ventured to their own capital let alone the vast expanse of desert that lies beyond it. And as for unique identity… perhaps if conquistadors hadn’t exterminated the last of the indigenous Mapuche when they arrived, there would be more definition. But the Mapuche are small and dwindling, and the rest of the Chileans seem more European than South American.

For now Argentina has welcomed me with pine trees that make me yearn for Christmas, wine that dances on my tongue with each sip, and people who kiss first and ask questions later. It is warm in more ways than one and I am devastated that this is the country that I only have ten days to explore.