The Plan (Such As It Was)
I showed up in Santiago with two weeks, a dodgy knee, and absolutely no itinerary. My mate Finn had done 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 a few months back and hadn't shut up about it, so I figured I'd start there, geek out on the city's mad street art and funicular chaos for a day, then head south. Simple.
What I didn't account for was that "south" in Chile is basically Australia-sized, and that overland travel would turn me into a van-dwelling philosopher who misses flip-flops more than he misses hot showers.
I flew into Valpo on a Tuesday. The city smacked me immediately—crooked cerros painted in neon, street dogs napping on café chairs, the smell of diesel and empanadas. My guide was a woman called Carmen, who'd lived there her whole life and treated the crumbling funiculars like they were Ferraris. We rattled up and down those hillsides on the Ascensor Concepción, got proper lost in a maze of galleries and bakeries, and by noon I'd eaten three completos and understood why Finn reckoned this was the real Valparaíso—not the Instagram version, but the one where actual humans lived.
The semi-private format meant there were only four of us, so Carmen wasn't herding tourists like they were sheep. She'd stop mid-sentence to chat with shop owners, detour for a arepa, make jokes I didn't entirely understand but laughed at anyway. This is the thing about overland slow travel: you're not ticking boxes. You're being places.
North First: The High Desert Gets Weird
I caught a night bus to San Pedro de Atacama. Ten hours of squealing brakes and a guy next to me who watched action films with no headphones. Classic.
San Pedro is the kind of town where you instantly understand why people stay for six months and then can't leave. It's high altitude, weirdly groovy, and everyone's a bit spaced out. I had two days there, and on the second morning—half-dazed and jet-lagged—I wandered into a booking office and asked what mad thing I could do that didn't involve a quad bike.
They suggested the Gong Bath in the Magic Forest in San Pedro de Atacama. Gong Bath in the Magic Forest in San Pedro de Atacama
I'll be honest: I thought it sounded like crystal-shop nonsense. But I was curious, so I showed up at dawn to a little forest—proper trees, which is mental in the middle of the desert—and lay on a mat whilst a woman called Marcela played these massive gongs and singing bowls for two hours.
Here's what happened: absolutely nothing, and also everything. You know that feeling when you're so tired and so far from home that your brain just... switches off? That. For two hours, I didn't think about deadlines or flip-flops or my dodgy knee. The vibrations from the gongs seemed to liquify my spine. I'm not saying it was spiritual—I'm saying it was weird and good and exactly what I needed at that particular moment in the chaos.
That night I caught another bus south. I was starting to understand the rhythm of this: drive, sleep awkwardly, arrive somewhere ridiculous, repeat.
The Lakes Region: Where Everything Got Ridiculous
I'd booked a week in the Pucón and Villa la Angostura area because apparently I'm a glutton for punishment. The landscape here is insane—dense Patagonian forest, massive lakes, and a string of volcanoes that look like they were designed by someone who'd watched too much sci-fi.
I stayed in Pucón first, a cute lakeside town full of trekking tours and people in Merrell hiking shoes. On my second morning, I looked at my knee, looked at the itinerary, and thought: Why not make my own life harder?
I'd signed up for the Villarrica Volcano Ascent. Villarrica Volcano Ascent
Listen, I'm not a mountaineer. I'm a bloke who loses his flip-flops and writes about getting lost. But there's something about standing at the base of an active volcano at 4 a.m., shivering in hired crampons whilst your guide checks the weather, that makes you feel properly alive.
The ascent is eight hours of pure graft—2,847 metres straight up, volcanic scree and ice alternating like the mountain's playing mind games. My guide, Diego, was a absolute machine. He'd do this route four times a week and still had energy to take photos and translate my wheezing into encouragement.
About halfway up, I hit the wall—legs screaming, lungs furious, brain suggesting very loudly that this was a terrible idea. Diego just nodded and said, "Lentamente. Slowly. We are not racing." So we slowed down. And honestly, that's the whole philosophy of overland travel right there: go slow enough that you actually notice you're alive.
The summit was a lunar landscape—active fumaroles smoking away, the view extending back to the Andes. My phone died before I could take a photo, which felt perfect. Some moments don't need documentation.
Villa la Angostura: Glaciers and Reflection
I spent two nights recovering in Villa la Angostura, a twee little village that feels like someone airlifted a Swiss town into Patagonia. I stayed in a cabana, walked around aimlessly, and ate incredible bread at a bakery run by a woman who kept trying to speak English at me.
On my last full day, I did the Guided Half Day Kayak Tour with Picnic in Villa la Angostura. Guided Half Day Kayak Tour with Picnic in Villa la Angostura
Nahuel Huapi Lake is otherworldly—glacier-fed water so turquoise it looks photoshopped. My guide, Matías, handed me a kayak and we pushed off into this massive expanse of absolute silence. The forest slopes up on either side, and you're paddling through this corridor of green and white water. We stopped on a tiny beach for a picnic—fresh bread, salami, terrible wine—and I sat there thinking about how far I'd come from the chaos of Santiago.
The kayak tour is exactly four hours, and it's structured enough that you get the whole lake experience, but loose enough that if you want to just drift and stare, nobody's rushing you. That's the sweet spot for overland travel: guided but unhurried.
North Again: The Geysers at Altitude
My flight to Calama was coming up, so I left the lakes and headed back north. I'd made a rookie mistake by not booking the Geysers del Tatio Geysers del Tatio when I was in San Pedro the first time, so I built in another night there on the way back.
Geysers del Tatio is a proper high-altitude show—over 4,000 metres in the Andes, geothermal activity that's been spewing hot water and steam for millennia. The tour starts at 4 a.m. because the best geyser display happens at dawn when the air is coldest and the contrast is most dramatic. We drove out in darkness, and when the sun came up, we were standing in this alien landscape of geysers, hot springs, and travertine formations.
Your guide is basically a geothermal nerd, which is brilliant because you learn why this is happening (it's not magic, it's geology, but honestly both are worth your time), and you also get to wade into hot pools whilst the sun climbs over the Andes. It's eight hours, and you're fucked by the altitude the whole time, but it's the kind of fucked that turns into story material.
What Overland Actually Means
When you fly into a place, you get a highlight reel. When you drive and bus and walk, you get the actual texture of a country—the weirdos on the minibus, the dodgy hostel Wi-Fi, the empanada vendor who becomes your friend over three hours.
Chile is massive, and doing it slow meant I actually felt its scale instead of just photographing it. I summited a volcano on my knees, I floated on a turquoise lake, I got zonked on gongs in the desert, I tasted real coffee in crumbling Valparaíso.
Would I do it all again? Absolutely. Would I lose more flip-flops? One hundred percent.
The point of overland travel isn't efficiency. It's permission to be slow in a world that won't give it to you any other way. And sometimes that looks like eight hours on a bus to save thirty quid, or taking a tour that doesn't have Wi-Fi, or climbing a volcano just to prove to yourself that your knees still work.
Chile's not going anywhere. Neither are you, if you're doing it right.
