Chile, South America
Travel
In search of poetry in Chile
By Oliver Balch / The Financial Times
The bucolic Elqui Valley inspired Gabriela Mistral in equal measure. Born in 1889 to a seamstress mother and a soon-to-be absent father, Mistral overcame her start in life to become Chile’s foremost female poet. She was also South America’s first female Nobel Prize-winner, an accomplished diplomat, a life-long educator and a passionate defender of women’s rights. The writer never forgot the gravelly mountains and lush vales of her childhood, referring back to them continually in her work. When she died in 1957, the country pulled its curtains closed and went into three days of official mourning....Foreign tourists tend to skip over this picturesque corner of rural Chile. The Elqui Valley lacks the drama of the Atacama Desert in the north or the cobalt-blue glaciers of the south. Picturing Chile as a snake (which it resembles when looked at sideways on an inverted map), then it’s the country’s bulging eye and swishing tail that attract the visitor. Mistral’s birthplace is more like the field mouse trapped in its belly.... >>>Go to Full Story >>>
Explore Chile's well-run cities and remote far north
Though famed for the poet Neruda and fine wine, Chile remains 2,600 miles of mystery
Name one thing you know about Chile. Tango? That's Argentina. Tortillas? Not here. Carnival? Try Brazil. Think. Think of a long, skinny South American country in the shape of a backward "J" hemmed in between the Andes and the blue Pacific. The one where a poet named Neruda and a dictator named Pinochet lived. The one where wine comes from, the one with alpacas in the north, with penguins in the south, with deserts, forests, beaches, mountains and a middle-class standard of living, yet which remains a 2,600-mile ribbon of mystery, often even to its citizens....