Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - Chile Guide: Wine, Patagonia, and Restorative Tourism

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

We're traveling to Chile today!You may know that part of Patagonia is in Chile, but did you know you can also find 7,000-year-old mummies here? This country is filled with surprises, and there is something for everyone, from surfing and skiing to beaches and hot springs. There are more than 40 national parks, six UNESCO sites, and plenty of award-winning wine. I’m joined by Steph Dyson, a travel writer and author of the Moon Chile travel guidebook. Steph spent a year exploring this long and skinny stretch of South America, and she’s here today to share her favorite experiences.Steph also talks about her passion for supporting restorative tourism, in which indigenous communities invite visitors to learn about their culture, and why we should be calling ‘Easter Island’ Rapa Nui. Enjoy!sarahmikutel.comHello! I'm your host, Sarah Mikutel. But the real question is, who are you? Where are you now and where do you want to be? Can I help you get there?Visit sarahmikutel.com to learn how we can work together to help you achieve more peace, happiness, and positive transformation in your life.Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Welcome to Live Without Borders, a travel and wellness show for expats, the expat curious, and globally minded citizens of the world. We are the travelers, the culturally curious, the experiences and not things kind of people. And we know that freedom is about more than getting on a plane. It's about becoming the most heroic versions of ourselves, which is why on this podcast you will hear insider travel secrets, inspiring expat stories and advice on how to live abroad. but you will also hear episodes that will help give you the clarity, focus, and skills you need to create a life that will set your soul on fire. I am your host, Sarah Micatel, a certified clarity coach trained in the Enneagram, and I first moved abroad on my own at age 18, and I have been permanently enjoying life in Europe since 2010. If you are ready to make some big moves in your life

and want my help moving from someday to seize the day, visit live without borderspodcast.com. Today we are traveling to Chile. Hello there. I hope you are well. A long-time listener of the show wrote in telling me that he's heading to South America soon, and I thought it would be fun to help him out with some travel guides. So I covered Uruguay a few episodes back, and you can look forward to Argentina in the future. But today is all about Chile. You may know that part of Patagonia is in this country, but did you know that you can also find 7,000-year-old mummies here? Yes, older than what you'll find in Egypt? Chile is filled with surprises, and there is something for everyone from surfing and skiing to beaches and hot springs.

That's where I would be headed. There are more than 40 national parks here, six UNESCO sites, and plenty of award-winning wine. I am joined by Steph Dyson. She is a travel writer and author of the Moon-Chile travel guidebook, and she spent a year exploring this long and skinny stretch of South America, and she is here today to share her favorite experiences. Steph also talks about her passion for supporting restorative tour.

tourism, and this is when indigenous communities invite visitors in to learn more about their culture. And she also talks about why we should be calling Easter Island Rapidui. Enjoy the episode. Welcome, Steph. Thank you so much for joining me today. No problem. Thank you very much for having me. I think you've lived in a few places in South America. Is that right? Yeah, so I've lived in Bolivia and Peru and Chile and Columbia and also traveled extensively in various others for kind of guidebooks or my blog or other kind of journalist journalistic commitments. What prompted you to start exploring that region? And why did you choose Chile of all of them to spend more time in? So I used to be a secondary school teacher and up in the northwest of the UK and did it for about five years and realized it wasn't

sustainable for my own mental health because I think I quite like being in control. I've learned a little bit to not be in control, but being a perfectionist is not a good trait to have in a classroom full of 30 children who have other ideas about what they want to be doing. So I decided I wanted to spend two years traveling the world and I found a volunteering project in Bolivia just outside Sukk, or just inside Sukarni, where I could stay for six months and learn Spanish, because I really wanted to gain fluency in Spanish. And then I ended up staying a year in Bolivia, and then I ended up moving to Peru and staying there seven months. And then by this point, I realized I wasn't going to be going home after two years. And I ended up in Santiago,

where I met my ex-boyfriend. And I stayed there sort of for three years whilst we were together. and it, yeah, and just fell in love with Chile. And yeah, it was completely unplanned. And aside to that, then I started up a website. I started guidebook writing. I started travel writing. And it kind of all just serendipitously fell into place. And now it sounds like you split your time between England and, is it Chile?

So England and South America, I was trying to spend six months in each, just as the pandemic started. I was actually in Columbia when the pandemic hit and had to get a repatriation flight back to the UK, which was somewhat traumatizing at the time. So, yeah, my plan is to kind of split my time between them because it's a huge part of me. And I think a lot of people don't really understand how I can continue spending so much time in the same continent. And there is so much more to explore. But it's just an addiction.

I love going and speaking to people. I love having the Spanish to be able to do it. And it's just such a vast and varied. area that there's so much, so much to see. I see brand new things and learn so much every time I go. So you are the travel author on the book on Chile for Moon Travel Guidebooks. How did that opportunity come about? So I think at that time I'd been living in Chile for about a year and a friend who I'd worked with when I was living in Peru, because at this stage I'd kind of been in and around South America for about three years. And he sent me this little. He sent me this

link to the Moon, Moon Travel Guide website where they actually publish opportunities. And he said, oh, you should definitely apply for this. But then when I tried to apply, it had expired. So I was like, oh, damn, missed that one. But then a couple of months later, I'd been kind of checking back on their website, and it came up again. So I just, I literally just sent a kind of application email. And then the actual process of getting a guidebook commissioned is quite long, because they require you to kind of go through a series of interviews and end up having to put this synopsis together. of what I'd include in the book. And I think at that stage, there was two of us in the running for the book. And this synopsis was a huge piece of work. And luckily, I got the job, but I can't imagine the other

person who didn't was particularly happy. But yeah, so that process took about sort of three months and then the writing of the guidebook from sort of that process starting until it being published was about three years. It's an incredibly long, very busy process. Yeah, the publishing process really lasts a long time. How much did the actual like traveling and writing of the book last? So because it was a first edition, now I've worked on ones that are not sort of first editions for rough guides and also for DK, eyewitness guides. And it's a slightly different process. But for a first edition, because you are literally starting from scratch, and the way Moon works is that the author owns the copyright, so the moment you stop wanting to be part of that book,

then either they buy the copyright from you or they just start from scratch. So with me, we started from scratch. Now, because this was my first guidebook, I didn't really have any sort of comprehension for how long that that was going to take. But actually, I think for the on-the-ground research, so I was living in Santiago, I was traveling sort of three weeks out of four and then coming home to try and desperately write out my notes and turn it into a chapter. And that took about a year, maybe a year and a half of kind of actual research. And I guess I was extremely kind of picky and making sure that I was extremely detailed with it because I really, like I think until you start writing a guidebook, you don't realize how, how little you actually know a country. And I think

as part of the research process, I think I've visited about 90% of Chile. It's more than most friends in the country I have, have ever done. So it was an incredibly fascinating, but also, incredibly busy kind of year and a half trying to jump around and visit all of the destinations that I possibly could. Wow. And your book came out like right before. Well, no, in the middle of COVID, kind of. I think it was July 2020, right? Yeah. Yeah. That was quite, that was quite upsetting because we'd spent so long in this book and I'd been telling for my website, well, theadventure.com, I'd be telling all my readers all about this book that was coming out and there's it was going to be great and I was really excited about it. And then obviously COVID happened.

And then I kind of contacted my publishers to ask whether it would still be going ahead and still be getting published because it had been planned to kind of, yeah, it'd be published in July 2020. And they said, yeah, we're still doing it. And I don't think anybody quite realized at the time how long it was going to take for sort of travel to be starting again. And to honest, it was probably better. It came out when it did because I think if they'd have held onto it, then they wouldn't have ever published it because unfortunately a lot of it is out of date now so many of the restaurants and sort of hotels and things have closed down it is still a great resource because i think all of the kind of other information then there is still useful but i think anybody traveling

with a guidebook at the moment needs to be fully aware that there are none of them i think that are actually reflective of the situation on the ground so it's just double checking before you commit to things in the guidebook is is really important Yeah, that's a good bit of advice or even trying to make reservations, maybe doing some planning in advance and checking to see if these places are still open, as you said. Well, I would love to, like, dive in and we can take a look at, like, a broader brush of, you know, towns and regions and activities that are definitely still around in some capacity. So, tell us all about Chile, what does the postcard look like? So Chile is a country that I fell desperately in love with when I first arrived.

back in there, I think it was 2016. And it is a country that I think most people know it for its kind of natural landscapes. It contains half of Patagonia, which is kind of just a whirlwind of glaciers and hiking routes and penguins and humours and just very magical, truly magical landscapes. You can understand why I think humans have been obsessed with Patagonia for millennia. And also kind of as you head north, you've got kind of the lusher, the Valdivian forests, which have got these incredible sort of thousand-year-old trees and some really beautiful national parks that are quite recently created. And then as you head further north, you kind of enter the wine regions, which are really, really delicious. Chile is known for its kind of red and it's white.

And then as you continue heading north, you kind of get some beautiful coastlines and then head into the kind of desert, the Atacama Desert, which is the, well, it's just an enormous place. And again, you've got some really outstanding destinations to visit there in terms of gazers and hot springs and volcanoes and all sorts of things. And it's really known for it's stargazing too. So that's kind of a broad overview of some of the delights that you can find in Chile. Yeah, it sounds like this country, which is like a really long strip, right, of a country, has something for everyone. So if you're sporty, there's like surfing and skiing and if you like beaches there's that if you like cities you've got that anyone can find something here i think yeah i agree and i think the biggest problem i do a lot of kind of travel

itinery planning for clients through my website and the biggest problem is is really working out which bits to see and which bits to leave and i think it's yeah it's it's definitely a place i think people think they'll they'll you know they'll do chile in a couple of weeks but it is massive and it packs so many things in there. Like you said, it is definitely a destination for everybody. And I think there's a lot more kind of culture and interesting food than perhaps people would, would realize kind of on a first glance. So there's definitely plenty to kind of keep you busy on a trip there. Let's say that we're going for the first time and we like seeing like the cultural offerings that a city would have to offer. We're into wine. We like beaches. How would we start? Would we

fly into Santiago and then take it from there? Yeah, so Santiago is the kind of main, main hug. And what typically happens is because Chile is such a long country, you do tend to spend quite a lot of time in Santiago if you're flying to other destinations. Unfortunately, there's very few kind of flights that connect destinations without going in Santiago. So you get to know the airport quite well, but it does mean flights are kind of an hour, two hours, three hours maximum, and you can move around very quickly. So yeah, you'd start in Santiago. I think if you wanted to get some interesting beaches and interesting culture, the place a lot of people had to from there is Valparaiso. So it was one of the main ports historically built by the British, I believe.

And it's got some really interesting architecture. There's some really old finicular railways that you can go on there, really beautiful street art, some of which has its kind of roots in kind of the protest movement against the dictatorship. And there's also some just lovely beaches just sort of north of there and some incredible seafood. And I think that's only an hour or two from Santiago. So would you recommend, did you live in Santiago? Would you recommend like staying there and then just doing a day trip to, I'm not going to pronounce this right, Belparaiso? How did you say it? That was good. Belparaiso, yeah. Okay. Would you, or would you go there? Like, what's good for what kind of people? Yeah. So it is about,

things about an hour and a half on the bus. So some people do do a day trip. I think Valparaiso is a great place to stay overnight as well because basically it's on a cliff so overlooking the sea. So most accommodation will overlook the sea. And it's really beautiful to kind of see the lights and the bay because you've got Balparaiso and then you've got sort of further around the bay. You've got another city called Viny al-Mar. So it is really beautiful at night time. There's also some really excellent restaurants, some really fun bars as well. Valparaisal is mainly a student city. So there's an awful lot going on there. So yeah, if you're interested kind of in that, there's also some really interesting hotels. There's a place

called Wine Box. Balaparaisal. It's run by a guy who used to lead one of the wineries in the Casablanca Winery Valley and he actually makes wine in the car park, in the basement of this. They're all container ships and everything. Kind of container ship, what they call, you know, the, yeah. Yeah, shipping containers, I think. Shipping containers, that's the one. He's got loads of those, and it's beautiful. And actually, he's New Zealand, that's why, because of the shipping containers. He was inspired after the Christchurch earthquake to kind of use those to build the hotel.

So, yeah, there's some just really interesting things to do in the evening. So I think, like, a couple of nights in Santiago and then maybe head over to Valparaisal for a night or two. And just it's a very different pace of life in Badaparaisal. So it's a really interesting contrast from the capital. I was reading that ethno tourism is something that is becoming bigger over there. That was like a term. I don't know if that's the term everyone uses. I think I saw that like on a lonely planet website or something.

But the idea that indigenous people are creating their own opportunities to welcome people in and teach them about their culture. And of course, it's a good way to bring money into their communities. Are there any opportunities like that that you can think of that we could explore? Yeah, sure. I think it's definitely something that really interests me and actually on a recent trip to Panama, that was some of the things that I was looking at because I think particularly in Latin America, these indigenous communities have been the stewards of the natural world. And if we're talking about sort of sustainable tourism and tourism, almost restorative tourism, I know, is one of the terms that's now being used as well, then actually working with those indigenous communities who have lived on the land. and protected it for millennia has to be a part of that kind of tourism strategy. Now, when I visited the sort of lakes region in the south of Chile, there's a place called Lago Boudi. It's a really big lake and around it are a lot of Mapuche communities. And you can actually stay with them.

There's a kind of tourism, Lagobudi sort of tourism cooperative and they've got accommodation. They also have, I think they're called Ruka, which are these sort of straw-built houses that you stay in. They're really traditional Mapuche style of dwelling. And you can also learn a lot more about their sort of cosmology and their kind of beliefs. And they also have like farms and everything because it's all sort of sustainable sort of self-sufficient farming. But it's a really interesting visit. And I think it is giving the opportunity for the Mapuche to not only earn money, but also to kind of make Chileans as well as the wider world sort of understand a bit more about their culture and why it's so important that their traditions and lands are protected.

I love that. How would we get down there? And how do we travel around in general would you recommend when we're in Chile? So like I said, there's a lot. It's for some of the further reaches of the country, flights are the easiest way. To get down to Lago Budi, Snetamuco, which is a town, kind of, I think it's about sort of six hours south of Santiago. So there's also buses that you can take that go during the day or overnight. And you can also fly as well. I think Tamuko has an airport so you can get down there pretty quickly. And then to get to the kind of destinations, often it's, there is a lot of public transport, but it often can take a long time. It can be quite unreliable. Buses might not turn up when you think they will, particularly when you're

trying to go to quite rural communities. So to particularly to get to Lagobudi, it's easiest to sort of hire a car and you can get really affordable car hires at airports. And I heard that the buses, at least for like the long halls when you're going from like big area to big area are quite luxurious. They're much more luxurious than what we have in the UK. Yeah, I guess I'm comparing that or like US buses. I don't think that takes much though for them to be more luxurious. I think it's the thing about South America because for a long time there haven't been kind of low cost airline carriers. There's barely any train network left.

So everybody uses the buses. which means that they are significantly better equipped than the buses we might be used to. And they're very affordable. You'll often get, you might get meals on board. There'll be like toilets on board. There'll be entertainment systems, things like that. So, yeah, it can be quite comfortable.

And it's a great way to see the scenery as well as you travel. Tell us more about the wine region in Chile. There's quite a few different wine regions. So the most famous white wine region is right next to Valparaiso. so you can hop over to that for a day trip from Santiago, and it's called Casablanca. So they're really known for their kind of chardonnays, sewing on blonks, and you can visit wineries. There's a lot of activities you can do around there. I think my favorite sort of wine region is Colchagua, which is about a sort of three-hour drive

south of Santiago. And again, you can take the local bus to get there. And that's known for its red wines, and specifically the Carmanair grape, which, is, I think, quite some not a mellow, but I think it's of the same kind of family, but it actually died out in Europe, sort of sometime in the last couple of centuries, and they realized only, I think it was in the 90s, that actually all the mellow they thought they were growing in Chile was actually part Malo, and there was also stuff there that was Carminare. So it's one of the only parts of the world where they actually grow this grape. And it's a really kind of rich,

peppery, quite sort of robust red wine. And there's some absolutely, incredible vineyards. So Casa Silva has, it always wins awards for its red wine. You've got Montes as well. They have, they have a, like a chamber in their vineyard where they play like Coral Gagorian chance to keep the, help the wine sort of mature and everything in its barrels. And they've also got this incredible steak restaurant. It's sort of an open fire. It's all cooked over sort of wood fires. It's run by an Argentinian chef called Francis Malman, who's very famous for his cooking over sort of an open fire. And these are incredible places. A lot of them have accommodation and just wonderful restaurants with some of the best food that you'll have in the country.

Tell us some more about the food that we need to try in Chile. Are there any special dishes or drinks and also like some vegetarian options for people? Yeah. So I guess Chile like neighboring Argentina is a very red meat eating society. They love a barbecue, and there's some excellent steak restaurants kind of in Santiago, as well as this one I was saying, in Montes. I think some of the other kind of traditional dishes,

they really love fish. It's got an incredibly long coastline, but you get some amazing fish, and one of the kind of classic dishes, which has eaten in the Chilaue region, so this is a big island, sort of just off the coast, of mainland Chile,

and they have a dish called curanto and basically it's cooked it's all sort of shellfish and there's sort of sausages and and sort of other bits of fish in there as well and potatoes and basically they build they like scoop out this hole in the ground line it with nalika leaves these massive leaves from a plant quite similar to rhubarb but just enormous line it with that they put the food in there and they've got like a layer of sort of coals underneath that they'll put in before they put the food in and then you sort of wrap it up and then put the soil back on top and it will cook for five, six, seven hours. And at the end of the cooking period, you'll open it up and you've got this

amazing kind of seafood sort of steamed inside this hole. And it's quite the experience. I mean, I've never actually done the experience. You can get it as well in a sort of cooked in a pan in some of the markets in Chilliway Island as well. But it's an incredible kind of, again, it's a sort of indigenous tradition. The Chilaway Islands are lots of the people who live there are fishermen. And it's just an incredible experience. I heard avocados are quite big as well. Avicados are huge.

Avocado, like, they really, children really love sandwiches as well. And there's a couple of places in Santiago that are really known for the sandwiches. And every one of them will include avocado. It might have kind of like stewed beef or stewed pork in there, lots of mayonnaise. They love tomatoes in there as well.

It's a very tin. typical kind of Chilean snack to have a massive sandwich with lashings of sort of mashed of avocado. All right, avocado toast for me all the way. Sounds good. Do you have a favorite sandwich shop? A favorite sandwich shop. Now, the Fuente Alemania was the really big one, but unfortunately, I think it's closed down during the pandemic, which is really sad because I've been going on for sort of decades. But there's lots of, if it's called a Fuente, there's generally, it's kind of where you can get sandwiches and sort of like fizzy drinks or beer or whatever. So anywhere that's called a Fuente in Santiago is where you're going to find some really good sandwiches.

Are there any other cultural traditions? They love Pisco. That's another really important tradition. So Pisco is basically distilled, an alcohol made from distilled wine. So, well, sort of, well, not distilled wine, but from distilled kind of grape juice. So they grow a lot of grapes in the kind of Norte Chico. So there's a place called Pisco Elki in the Alki Valley and that's where they grow a lot of the Pisco. And turn it into Pisco,

and then you'll have it in Pisco Sowers, which are also drunk across the border in Peru. It's a bit of a debate. You don't want to wade into this. This is something to not do when you get into Chile. Do not tell them that Pisco is from Peru because they will be very cross with you. But, yeah, Peru and Chidea both

have been arguing for a very long time over who first created Pisco. But a good Pisco sour in Chile, they don't necessarily put the kind of, you often have egg whites in it in Peru, but it's kind of just sort of lemon juice and ice and Pisco and it's just really kind of sour and some sugar in there as well, sour and sweet and incredibly worryingly Moorish, if I'm honest. I love Piscoe Sowers. It sounds like a beachy type of a drink.

Is there a special occasion or people just drinking this all the time? I think it's kind of an aperitif. So like if you go for dinner, particularly if you go for dinner sort of Valparais or Vinea del Mar, they've got a lot of really nice fish restaurants with terraces overlooking the ocean. And you might just have it as kind of alongside your starter before you moved on to maybe white wine with your main course. So it's just a nice kind of introductory drink for the start of the evening. That sounds nice. Well, Steph, you have seen so much of Chile. Obviously, you literally wrote the book on it. What were your favorite experience? during this year of travel writing? Yeah, so I haven't spoken a huge amount about Patagonia, which is unusual, because this is generally what I wax lyrical about. And I think Patagonia, particularly, I mean, every, well, most people who have heard of Chile, have heard of Torres El Paine, the National Park in the far south of Chile, and it's got this

beautiful kind of spires of rock via this lagoon, and you kind of do this hike up to it, so you can either do like a five-day hike or you can go all the way around the back of the National Park and do a 10-day hike. And that's pretty special. And just there's a lot of glaciers there. You might see pumas. You see a lot of kind of Guanaco as well, which is the kind of wild version of the alpaca. And that whole region, if you go down into sort of Puerto Williams, which is actually the southernmost settlement on the planet, it's across the Beagle Channel from Ushawa on the Argentinian side. And down there's just, it's just remarkable. There's some amazing passenger ferries you can take from Puntairena's to Puerto Williams. And it's just a local, it's a local

ferry. It's, you meet people who are just, you know, traveling to see family in Punterena, so heading back to Puerto Williams from like doing some shopping in the kind of city. And you, you go along this place called Glacier Alley and it's got all of these hanging glaciers that are sort of feeding into the channel and they're just sort of seeming to drip down the side of the cliffs and it's absolutely beautiful and yours see like penguins bobbing around in the water or we saw loads of humpback whales as well and it's just absolutely outstanding and truly astonishing scenery and the best thing about these these ferries is that normally if you were doing one of the big cruise companies you'd be looking at three thousand dollars but these ferries will cost you i think is about 150 dollars for this

sort of two-night trip. And it's very basic, but you're still seeing the same incredible scenery. And that was definitely one of the highlights of exploring the country. Wow. Well, thank you for that beautiful imagery that you just painted. I really appreciate that. So the ferries, is there a name of it? Or should we just like Google this? Yeah. So it's called the Tabsa Ferry, so the Trans Bordidora Ferry. And it goes from Punta-Nanus to Puerto Williams and they run a few different ferries. I think any sort of trip to Patagonia, particularly if you go further north to the Cadetad Ostra, which is the kind of, basically, when Chile gets really narrow, it's sort of the side of the west of the Andes Mountains.

And it's a very wet, very green, very beautiful part of Patagonia. And it's lesser known than sort of the very southern stretches. But again, there's loads of ferries you can do there. the transportador have a ferry from there to Puerto Montalas as well, sort of in the very south of Patagonia. And I think just taking a ferry where you are literally in the middle of all these incredible fjords, there's no people aside from this boat. And it's just, it makes you understand quite how remote some of these parts of Chile really are. What would you say is the best time of year to do this trip?

So I think if you want to visit Patagonia, the main season is typically kind of November through to March, April, because this is the moment time when it's kind of the warmer weather, it's the austral summer and the weather theoretically is going to be sort of maybe a little bit drier and certainly not as cold. For the rest of the country, I mean, sort of south of Santiago does start getting pretty cold from about sort of June onwards through to about September. But they're very far north of the country, the Atacama Desert. and also Rapa Nui, aka Easter Island. Both of those can be visited year-round because they've got fairly kind of warm climates. Could you tell us a little bit more about Easter Island? Sure, yeah.

I think, so I'm going to refer to it as Rapa Nui because I'm very adamant. I mean, on the moon guide, you'll notice it's Chile with Rapa Nui with Easter Island and brackets. Now, the Rathanoi have been treated horrifically throughout history, appallingly they atrocities were brought upon them firstly by kind of I think

it was the Dutch who first got there than the Spanish then the Brits and the Scottish like everybody's done some and then the Chileans haven't treated them very well so they are extremely proud of their heritage and the island is known as Rapa Nui so I'm on a bit of a kind of quest to make everybody refer to it

by its indigenous names Rappanui I will hear by after this and that's RAPA and then space N-U-I. Exactly. Okay. So Rapa Nui was a destination that I was not expecting to enjoy.

Because I typically do not like places where there are lots of other people. That is my concept of that's just not the way I travel. And to be fair, I visited, I think it was in Maytime. So it was quite quiet on the island because they have a lot. There's a big festival in February, which actually does sound incredible. But that's when most people visit. Now, Rapa Nui is, so they think they've been living on the island since about the kind of 12th century, maybe a little bit earlier. They came over by boat from Polynesia and the Mawai, which are the big stone heads.

And they're actually more than just heads as typically kind of they're down to about sort of belly button height, these stone carvings. We're basically made from this, the volcanic rock because Rappanui is a volcanic island. And there's actually a couple of volcanoes on the island, sort of door. ones. So the scenery itself is remarkable. But yeah, so they would build these basically when important members of the community died and they were to sort of represent them. And what you have around the island is these platforms called Ahu on which these mawai have been put. And often they're the bones of that, the individual whose statue it was would be buried underneath that statue inside the platform. Now, throughout the kind of history of

epinui nobody really knows what happens what happened on the island and what kind of caused the collapse of the civilization and what caused them to basically that they went round and destroyed or brought down as many of the moai as they could so the yahoo that you see today and the moai you see standing up have actually been put back up there as they once were and they are remarkable like they are so vast and it's kind of just so thrilling and sort of just incredible to be looking at basically the local people's ancestors. I think the most profound moment I had when I was on the island, I was with my tour guide looking at one of the Aahu,

and he just was like, oh, you see that sort of third one on the left? Like, that was my ancestor. And I think that's what we forget with Rapa Nui is that actually this is very recent history, the people, the descendants of the Rapa Nui who live on the island, this is why they're so proud of their history. And it is incredible to go and visit that island, truly. There's so many things that I could say about it.

But yeah, it's such an incredible place to visit. Can we stay there? Yes. So there's a lot of, it's basically it's a six-hour flight from Santiago because we are right in the middle of Pacific Ocean. It's when you land, you realize quite a way from everything you are on this tiny little island. And there's plenty of accommodation, some of which is run by like local people, some of which is run by kind of Chileans from the mainland

and you can get around that you can rent kind of quad bikes or jeeps to get around or even bikes. It is quite humid. So you probably don't want to go with the bike option because you'll get quite warm. But yeah, spending sort of three days on there, three or four days is an opportunity to see some of the remarkable kind of Ahoo and other kind of archaeological sites on the island.

Yeah. So if you like history and architecture, and it sounds like a place that you can't miss. Exactly. I would agree. Like I said, I did not expect to find it so remarkable, but I did. Speaking of history, I believe that there are mummy museums in. Tilly, could you tell me a little bit more about that and like what that culture is?

Yeah. So again, this was another thing that I didn't know an awful lot about until I started researching the guidebook. and that it's weirdly not really very well known. But if you go to very far north of Chile to Arica, that's kind of just on the border with Peru. And basically, one of the houses there, they were turning it into a hotel, and they started digging up the foundations

and basically came across some money. It's just lying buried in the foundations of this former house. And it got turned into a museum, which is now in the center of Erika. And basically they're the remains of the Chinchado, mummies. I think these mummies, they're sort of 7,000 years old or something incredible. They are at least 2,000 years older than the Egyptian mummies. There's another museum just outside of Rilika, where you can go and see more of the mummies, but also learn more about the kind of mummification

process and why they did it. And yet, it's just truly remarkable. They've got sort of dozens and dozens of these mummified bodies that were just found. And because it's the desert, they basically have just been incredibly well, well kind of preserved underneath the earth. But yeah, there are very few people know about them, but it's definitely if you're interested in kind of history and just learning a lot more about that, yeah, like I said, these ancient histories

that we perhaps don't get as much airtime as perhaps the Inca or the Maya or the Aztecs or whatever. There's plenty of interesting things to learn up in the north of Chile. I hope you enjoyed this taste of Chile and in the next episode, Steph and I will discuss the best of Santiago, which is Chile's capital city. Meanwhile, you can find out more about Steph and her guidebook about this country at worldlyadventurer.com. That's all for now. Thanks for listening and have a beautiful week wherever you are. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot?

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