The Plan Was Solid. Obviously It Wasn't.
I showed up in Santiago with a backpack held together by duct tape, a half-charged phone, and a three-week window to make some sense of South America's skinniest country. The original idea was simple: hit Patagonia hard, chase some swells, maybe write something readable about slow travel. What actually happened was messier, warmer, and infinitely better.
First mistake: I booked too much. Second mistake: I thought I could execute it in sequence like some kind of functioning human. Third mistake: I underestimated how badly I'd fall for this country.
I started at the wrong end—San Pedro de Atacama, that dusty tourism hub in the Atacama Desert that somehow feels both overrun and utterly remote. Most backpackers there are doing dune buggies at sunrise and neon sand tours at dusk, which, fair play, looks unreal in the photos. But I was jet-lagged, burnt out, and desperate for something that wouldn't involve screaming through sand at 6 a.m.
A mate at the hostel—Swiss bloke named Marco, travelling on basically nothing—mentioned he'd booked a Gong Bath in the Magic Forest in San Pedro de Atacama Gong Bath in the Magic Forest in San Pedro de Atacama. I'd never heard of it and honestly thought he was taking the piss. Turned out it was real: two hours of lying on a mat in an actual forest (yes, there's forest near the desert if you know where to look), whilst someone played vibrational instruments and basically sorted your brain out with sound waves.
I went. I was cynical. Thirty seconds in, I was gone—properly gone, floating somewhere between the gong vibrations and the weight of my own exhaustion. When it finished, I couldn't remember my name. Marco was grinning. "Worth the hype, yeah?" He wasn't wrong.
The Detour That Wasn't a Detour
Skip forward four days. I was supposed to be in Pucón already, the adventure sports hub near the volcanoes, but I'd gotten distracted in a wine valley. This is what slow travel means to me: you miss the connecting bus, meet someone in a café who invites you to lunch, and suddenly it's night and you're trying to work out if what you just drank was world-class or you've just been conned by a charming Chilean winemaker.
At Butón Budinich in the Cachapoal Valley, I did the Legacy Family Tour Lunch or Dinner Pairing 4 Strokes Legacy Family Tour Lunch or Dinner Pairing 4 Strokes. Now, I'm not usually a wine person—I'm more of a "whatever's cold" bloke—but this was different. The winery's been going since 1952, and the owner took us through centuries worth of vessels: ancient greda vats, massive wooden fudres that looked like they'd seen revolutions, French oak barrels, concrete tanks, stainless steel. Each one told a story. Each glass paired with the lunch tasted like someone had bottled terroir and heartbreak.
The owner's daughter was our guide, and she was funny, knowledgeable, and clearly unimpressed with wine tourism bullshit. She'd skip the flowery notes, tell you straight whether something was good, and pour you another glass with a laugh. That's the wine experience that stays with you—not the fanciness, but the honesty.
Volcanoes and Near-Death Experiences
Pucón was chaos. Beautiful chaos, but chaos. The town's basically built for adventure junkies: there's climbing, paragliding, rafting, and—most ambitiously—the Villarrica Volcano Ascent Villarrica Volcano Ascent.
I'd done some stupid things in my travel career. Kitesurfed in a thunderstorm. Camped alone in a desert with sketchy water. But an 8-hour slog up one of Chile's most active volcanoes whilst badly hungover felt like a new personal low.
The thing about Villarrica is it doesn't look that hard until you're on it. You hike through dense forest first, which is gorgeous. Then you hit volcanic rock, and it's all switchbacks and loose scree and your legs screaming. But the real test is the summit snowfield—crampons, ice axes, the works. You're above the clouds. You can see the crater steaming. It's proper serious.
I was paired with a guide named Roberto, a Pucón local in his sixties who'd probably summited Villarrica about four hundred times. About two-thirds of the way up, I started struggling. Like, properly struggling—altitude, dehydration, the general fuckup of my life choices catching up with me. Roberto didn't lecture. He just slowed down, made me drink water, and told me stories about tourists who'd quit halfway.
"But you won't quit," he said. Not a question.
I didn't quit. The summit was the kind of view that erases complaints: you can see three volcanoes, the lakes below, and on a clear day, the Pacific. Roberto sat there eating a sandwich like he was on a park bench. I sat there trying not to cry, which is what summits do to you.
Lakes and Paddles South
After the volcano nearly killed me, I made my way further south to Villa la Angostura, a small town on Nahuel Huapi Lake that somehow escaped the Bariloche tourist circus. It's proper Patagonia: steep mountains, glacial water, those dense lenga forests that look like something out of a fairytale if you squint.
I had a morning free and booked the Guided Half Day Kayak Tour with Picnic in Villa la Angostura Guided Half Day Kayak Tour with Picnic in Villa la Angostura. Four hours on the water sounds chill until you're paddling across glacier-fed turquoise water, past rocky outcrops, through forest so thick it echoes. The guide—a quiet Argentine named Martina—knew where the light was best, where the water was deepest, where you might see condors if you were lucky.
We got lucky. One passed overhead, impossibly large, and everyone stopped paddling just to watch. Then Martina found a little beach tucked into the forest, and we had a picnic of fresh bread and cheese whilst the mountains loomed. It's these moments—the ones that don't make it into adventure highlight reels—that actually stick with you.
The City, Done Right
By the time I hit Valparaíso, I was ready for chaos. That city is bonkers—colourful houses tumbling down hillsides, street art everywhere, a vibe that's equal parts bohemian and slightly dangerous. Most tourists do the obvious thing: photo tour of the hills, maybe a museum.
I did the Valpo in 1 day: Authentic + Famous! Semi-private walking tour & public transport Valpo in 1 day: Authentic + Famous! Semi-private walking tour & public transport.
Our guide was a Valparaíso native named Claudia who treated the city like we were old mates showing up for the weekend. We creaked up hills on ancient funiculars, rattled through working-class barrios on electric trolleybuses, hopped on old trains that probably should've been in museums. No polished tourist narrative—just a genuine day moving through a city the way locals actually move through it. We ended up in a hole-in-the-wall cevichería that Claudia insisted was essential, and it was.
The Long Way Home
Three weeks in Chile, and I'd gone from desert gong baths to volcano summits to kayaking across pristine lakes to getting properly lost in a city that refuses to be tamed. I'd missed flights, overbooked myself, got food poisoning once, and lost a flip-flop in Valparaíso (the usual).
But slow travel isn't about efficiency. It's about showing up in places and staying long enough to actually see them. It's about the wine lunch that turns into dinner. It's about a guide on a volcano who doesn't let you quit. It's about being still enough on a lake to hear what silence actually sounds like.
Chile stretched me out. Made me slow down. Made me believe that the long way round is almost always the right way.
Now I'm back at the beach in Mexico, already planning how to go back and do it wrong all over again.
