Your blog editor is taking a trip this week to a faraway place that some day might become a top travel destination: Chile. The country boasts a very stable government, an economy that is the envy of Latin America because their number one export is copper, and attractions that far and away amaze and dazzle gringoes like me.
For instance, they have 22 of the worlds 25 different ecosystems all in one 4000 mile long country. We explored the Atacama desert, where temperatures go up to about 100 degrees during the day and then sink down to 35. In cities like Iquique, on the northern coast, it rains only 2 centimeters per year. That means every restaurant has open air patios and there is even a gym with no roof out on the beach. When it does rain, it is a calamity because no one has roofs and patio furniture and outdoor living rooms are destroyed.
From this arid and moonlike place, you can fly south to Patagonia, where there are only about 200,000 people living in a million square miles. It is wet there, raining about 300 out of 365 days, often though it is just a drizzle. The roads are rough, the only real transport north to south is the Austral Highway, a two lane road with very bad bridges. Despite the hardships of transport, taking a boat out to the fjord and looking up at the vast tangle of jungle is magical.
A very high end resort recently opened on the coast here. It is called The Cliffs Preserve. Guests stay in their own seaside villas and are picked up and and taken to horseback rides, jungle treks, or blue whale watching in the resorts own fleet of Suburbans and watercraft. The resort was built by a man who also built a series of high end resorts in Ashville NC featuring a golf course designed by Tiger Woods. The Cliffs require a four night stay because they say they want to foster relationships, and take aging baby boomers away from their stress. The cost is $1200 per person per night, but of course that includes all of the activities, spa treatments, transports and sumptuous food you can eat.
