Chile Favorite Adventures

OUR FAVORITE ADVENTURES

Chile

Our Chile Favorite Adventures

Due to the Estallido Social, our time in Chile was focused on Patagonia. Fortunately, Patagonia offers many of the countries’ most amazing adventures. Here are a few of our favorites.

# 1. Completing the Carretera Austral

The Carretera Austral is a 770 mile road through the Patagonia region of Chile offering world class fishing, glacier tours, hiking, hot springs and kayaking. Some of the Carretera Austral is being paved so the sooner you do it, the better!

# 2. Completing the Lagunas Route

The Lagunas Route is a multi day overland route from Southwestern Bolivia into Northern Chile. This route, which requires 4WD, crosses through beautiful and bizarre landscapes including geysers, pink flamingo filled lagoons and volcanoes. Due to mechanical issues with our vehicle we were unfortunately unable to do the route, but we have dreams of completing it one day when we return.

# 3. Exploring Gaucho Communities

Gauchos are horsemen that live throughout South America. The Gauchos of Argentina and Chile are particularly famous, in large part due to their role in defeating the Spanish during Chile’s war of independence from the Spanish. We had an opportunity to visit a Gaucho community to the west of Futaleufú where we hired a Gaucho horseback riding guide to take us on an adventurous horseback riding trip through rugged wilderness and across a river to a remote waterfall. Somehow we survived the trip without falling off of our horses despite the fact that both of us hadn’t ridden a horse in many years.

# 4. Exploring the Atacama Desert

The Atacama Desert is full of amazing and surreal landscapes including geysers and salt flats. Don’t miss the Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) and remote hot springs of Puritama. The region also offers some of the best stargazing in the world which can be experienced in amazing stargazing tours.

# 5. Exploring Laguna San Rafael Glacier and The Marble Caves

The San Rafael Glacier and the Marble Caves can both be explored via boat tours from Puerto Rio Tranquilo in the Aysén Region of Chile. Make sure to go on a tour to the Marble Caves in the morning when the light is best and when the wind is calmer on the lake.

# 6. Hiking in Copahue, Pumalín and Queulat National Parks

The Copahue, Pumalín and Queulat National Parks offer particularly good camping and hiking opportunities.

# 7. Hiking in Parque Nacional Torres del Paine

Torres del Paine offers numerous hikes including the W hike which takes 4 or 5 days. We did not have time to complete this hike but if you want to, make sure to make reservations many months in advance.

# 8. Rafting the Futaleufú

The Futaleufú River is one of the top commercial river rafting adventures in the world. What makes the Futaleufú or “Futa” unique is it’s huge volume of water and multiple class IV and V rapids. The most famous section is called “bridge to bridge”. Bio Bio Expeditions offers amazing but expensive 8 day trips on the Futa which involve a wide range of activities including of course rafting using their lodge and safari style tent accommodations as a base. Whoever you go with, make sure that they are a reputable operation since the rapids are huge and “swimming” down a class IV or V rapid on the Futa would be exciting and, potentially, dangerous.