Postcard from Chile

INSPIRATION | CABANA TRAVEL | WORLD OF CABANA

Writer and photographer Chris Wallace journeys to Chile's extremes, from the country's mystical volcanoes and temperate rainforests, to the otherworldly landscapes of the Atacama desert. Join Chris as he discovers a land of striking and surreal beauty.  

BY CHRIS WALLACE | CABANA TRAVEL | 26 MARCH 2026

I first noticed them in Santiago airport — in a bit of a daze, jetlagged and bedraggled after a flight that had begun in London. They were ads for Chile, boasting, “It’s the end of the world.” I might have chewed on the idea, over a disarmingly delicious cazuela, during my layover, in between bouts of disbelief that here, on the west coast of Chile, I was somehow two hours ahead of the east coast of the US. Then, on my flight south, into the lake district, there were still more marketing materials, all presenting versions of the sentiment that Chile is the ultimate ultima thule, the ends of the earth. 

By the time I deplaned in central Chile, no messaging was needed. I felt well and truly in the back of beyond. Not because the landscapes and architecture are so outlandishly different from all I’d known, but because they were so disorientingly similar, if a bit askew. The log cabin style buildings we passed, huddled around lakes, overlooking massive volcanoes, might have been in any timber town anywhere, but here were made of trees, the likes of which I’d never seen. There seemed to be no firs of any type anywhere.

What we found instead, as we pushed further south, deeper into the woodlands, toward the temperate rainforests of the region, were the weird, wonderfully geometric-shaped “monkey puzzle” trees. A conifer whose seeds were sacred to the local peoples of the area, and is now the national tree of Chile, though this is the only place in the world where they are found. This place, which had already begun to seem somewhat surreal, something out of a fairy tale to me, kept adding layers of enchantment, pulling up the skirts of reality until I was completely immersed in the dreamworld. 

I’d come to Chile to stay at Vira Vira, a riverside farm operated by the famous safari outfitter and Beyond. Not that there was a lot of stopping and staying. As you’d expect from andBeyond (who, in their role as tour operator, helped me sort out the entirety of the Chilean trip, from South to North), the activities on offer range from river rafting, fishing and horseback riding, to hiking through the waterfalls in the rainforest of the Huequehue national park, and up and around the volcanoes looming over the valley.

The steadily smoldering snowcapped cone of Villarrica volcano is visible from almost everywhere on the grounds of Vira Vira, from the modern-chalet-style main house, with its woodlined great rooms, from the sheep meadows, and from the river that ran past my suite. And, not to get all Californian about it, but, everywhere here, while taking advantage of the excursions, you can feel the overwhelming closeness and planetary power of the volcanoes – some of the most active in the world – and dense, seemingly-otherworldly forests. 

As one of the guides said to me, “Here, it is magic. In the north, it is mystical.” And on arriving in the north, in the driest place on Earth, I was quick to see what he meant. The Atacama is desert like I’ve never seen. Desert like a set out of a Star War, but made by Jodorowsky — psychedelic, half-way sensical, and totally far out. 

The word “fantastical” litters my notes, as I set about trying to capture the radical weirdness of the topography. There are folds to the rocks that seem to defy all physics, rocks that seem to undulate, against geometry, and run the color spectrum from pale verdigris to neon aquamarine, from vermouth red to Barney purple. When the rocks run out, they give way to salt flats that look like they’ve been drawn with pastels – everything a feathery tone of blue, pink and green, which I haven’t seen since Miami Vice.

Not that being here is a superficial experience. Hardly. You don’t even need locals to tell you about the power and the magic of the place – which they will, happily – about the endless history of habitation in these inhospitable badlands. You feel it, the same way you feel gravity, if on a slightly different sensory axis. Like magnetism. The whole desert seems to hum with an indescribable frequency. Like the place that the hippies I grew up with used to call planetary chakras. Or what I kept thinking to myself was some very X-Files-y type of juju.

During my visit, I stayed at the great Nayara Alto Atacama — a collection of adobe-style buildings nestled into some of the miraculous rock walls of the region, not far from an ancient archaeological site. There I was joined by adventurous types, wilderness enthusiasts, and a National Geographic documentarian who was better able to capture the meteor shower we witnessed than the rest of us.

From our perch, we set out on our various sorties, up into the Andes, to one of the richest geyser fields on Earth, or out to the salt pans to see the flamingoes. These sensational, unbelievably harsh lands have, despite their lack of comforts, drawn people to them for millennia. For this beauty, perhaps. For the energy, the hum, I wondered. For the ore and the metals in the sand now. But maybe, still, for something a little less tangible, less fungible. Something more on Mulder and Skully’s beat, I tend to think.

Sadly, I didn’t, during my visit, teleport straight from Atacama to Alpha Centauri. I flew back south, to Santiago, which, having been at what seemed like the very literal end of the Earth, twice, was an explosion of modernity, and civilization. I scrambled around as quickly as I could to a wonderful restaurant and ordered a seafood tower for one. A ridiculous indulgence. The kind of thing someone does when they come back from outer space, or when they find themselves at the end of the world.