Chile

Chile runs as a narrow ribbon between the Andes and the Pacific. The north is the Atacama, the driest non-polar desert on earth, where astronomers prize the clear skies. The centre is a Mediterranean valley of vineyards and orchards. Further south come lakes, rain forests and snow-capped volcanoes such as Osorno, then the island of Chiloé, fjords and ice fields reaching down to Cape Horn. Far out in the ocean lies Rapa Nui, Easter Island.

At Monte Verde, near Puerto Montt, people were camping more than fourteen thousand years ago, and on the northern coast the Chinchorro mummified their dead long before the Egyptians did. Pedro de Valdivia founded Santiago in 1541, but the Mapuche held the lands beyond the Biobío until the 1880s. Bernardo O’Higgins led the struggle for independence, proclaimed in 1818. In September 1973 a coup overthrew Salvador Allende’s elected government, and military rule under Augusto Pinochet lasted until 1990.

Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda brought Chile two Nobel prizes for literature, in 1945 and 1971, and Violeta Parra’s songs shaped its folk revival. On Chiloé, shellfish, meat and potatoes are steamed together over hot stones in a pit to make curanto. Copper, dug from vast open pits such as Chuquicamata in the desert, is the backbone of exports, and the Atacama salt flats yield lithium. In 1994 vines long taken for Merlot were identified as Carménère, a Bordeaux grape thought lost.